Mandatory Unretirement

Kirk: Well, for a man who swore he'd never return to Starfleet...
McCoy: Just a moment, Captain, sir. I'll explain what happened. Your revered Admiral Nogura invoked a little-known, seldom-used "reserve activation clause." In simpler language, Captain, they drafted me!

— Star Trek: The Motion Picture

A person who, after having given up his old job, is reluctantly forced back into work because he's just so damn good at it. Usually because his former colleagues have run into some desperate situation, and/or his replacements have failed. The opposite of Reluctant Retiree.

Often will be a police officer, soldier, or mercenary, but can be any job. Retired Gunfighter is a common starting point for this character, before they are forced into Mandatory Unretirement. Often set up as an extended 10-Minute Retirement or crossover with a Scrap Heap Hero. This is one of the many Perils of Being the Best, as being so good that that you can do seemingly impossible things may mean that your life will never be your own. Has been known to overlap with Retirony if they don't make it through the final job.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Kunieda Aoi of Beelzebub was the 3rd leader of the Red Tails, a gang of the strongest ladies of Kanto who do not like men, and as such getting a boyfriend means that you quit. Kunieda sports an incredibly obvious crush on Oga since their first meeting and quits accordingly; however, the gang (and the Number Two especially) do not accept it and still treat Kunieda as their boss. Then the Red Tails' founder, through a special request, changes the rule about men, and afterward Kunieda reclaims her title after a showdown with the 2nd Red Tails leader who'd gone rogue along with the majority of the Red Tails.
• Fairy Tail: After the Time Skip, it has become a Running Gag that Makarov the 3rd Guild Master will always be appointed as the "new" Guild Master by his successors.
• Full Metal Panic!: In the side story "Golden Days with Captain Amigo," Sousuke and Kurz both find million dollar treasure. And both are shown to be in agreement that, once they get rich from this, they would both hightail it out of Mithril and retire, doing what they want. However, after they accidentally destroy an M6 AS, the higher-ups from Mithril take all the treasure from them as payment. Incidentally, it's revealed that the executives estimated the cost of damages to be higher, thereby taking all the treasure and destroying both of their plans for retirement. Even more suspiciously, it's revealed that Kalinin had a hand in the expenses... and of course, Kalinin had showed numerous times his desire to keep Sousuke with him.
• A recurring theme in Getter Robo is that if you piloted Getter at some point, no matter how far you run from it, destiny keeps throwing you in the cockpit.
• Averted in Moriarty the Patriot. While Mycroft and the Queen do try to pardon Albert and force him to continue on as the head of MI6, he refuses to take it and choses imprisonment.
• In Naruto, the Third Hokage is forced back into active duty after the incident that sealed the Kyuubi inside the main character, which caused the death of his successor, the Fourth Hokage. He wasn't the only person who was seen as a viable candidate, but the village went with him because they knew where to find him; the future Fifth Hokage had no interest in the job, and had left the village entirely after retiring from its ninja forces, while her teammates (the only other remaining contenders) had either turned traitor or had even more disinterest in the job than she did.
• At the end of the first season of Sailor Moon, Usagi wipes her and her friends' memories to give them yet another chance at a normal life without fighting. Come the second season, a new threat shows up and Luna is forced to restore her memories and reinstate her as Sailor Moon. Needless to say, Usagi is not pleased.
• In the Strider manga, Hiryu is forced out of his self-imposed retirement to murder his friend Cain, who was captured while on duty and became a liability to the group. He reluctantly accepts the job after his superior Matic threatens an entire village of innocents. Given the implications that Matic was responsible for Cain being captured in the first place as part of his plan for Hiryu to kill Enterprise President Clay in order to take over the ZAIN Project, it's safe to say that Matic's actions can never be justified as good intentions.

Comic Books

• Astro City:
  • All Sticks wants to do is play the drums. He left behind the Forever War on Gorilla Mountain and came to Astro City looking to become a musician, only to find that there are a number of groups eager to recruit an effectively superpowered gorilla who already has combat experience... and sadly, they aren't willing to take "no" for an answer. Ultimately, he resolves the problem by starting his own Five-Man Band of superpowered musicians who treat crime-fighting as a side gig.
  • Supersonic provides a tragic example. A Flying Brick super-strategist who served throughout the sixties and seventies, he's coaxed back out of retirement by an old friend who urges him to take care of a rampaging robot and show "these young upstarts how it's done". But after years of hard knocks and aging having taken their toll, Supersonic has become Dented Iron, no longer able to fight the way he's used to. Ultimately, he barely manages to eke out a Pyrrhic Victory, and is left feeling deeply ashamed of how much his skills have degraded and keenly aware that he won't be able to recover them.
• Double Duck has Donald Duck discover that he's a former sleeper agent for The Agency, who gets reactivated in order to track down a Double Agent.
• Red (2003): They should have left him alone.
• Robin (1993): While Tim didn't really want to retire from being Robin, he was okay with it and had moved on. Then Gotham fell into a bloody city-wide gang war that left him trying to save classmates at school in his civilian wear with no armor or gear. He was pulled back into the Batfamily permanently when he showed up to help after he noticed the newest Robin (who was also his girlfriend) was missing, especially since his father was killed within a week.

Fan Works

• Between Three Rogues: When Galcian forms his Eternal Empire, Ramirez personally requests that Doc be forcibly reenlisted in their army. Doc wants nothing to do with this; Maria and Piastol also protest him being forced back into service, with the latter getting violent about it.
• Crimson and Emerald: Aoi was a former Japanese Ambassador who retired in order to be close to her son, along with reconnecting with her old friends. Her mentor forces her back into politics since she was responsible for taking down the Heroics Commission, as said Commission now needs new leadership.
• The Eventide Verse: Lightning Rod opens with Kisu living in a retirement community, only to receive a summons from Princess Celestia, who wants her to tackle one last mission. While the princess frames it as asking for help, it's noted that she has the power to force the issue if need be; Kisu also notes that she doesn't believe Celestia would have bothered asking at all if she didn't already know Kisu would accept.
• A Hollow in Equestria: In Chapter 45, Princess Celestia realizes that her little ponies are hopelessly outclassed by the latest threat, and asks Ulquiorra to take up his old ways once more, as they need him and his skills. Ulquiorra is more than happy to oblige.
• In The Horsewomen Of Las Vegas, this happened in the backstory to crime boss, Ric Flair. He had planned to retire and have his son, David, run the family business. David got overzealous and tried to expand into other families' territories. Ric eventually had to come out of retirement in order to smooth things over and make peace with the other families. He then began grooming his daughter, Charlotte Flair, to be his eventual successor, much to her initial protests.
• Little Moments: After Kenny's funeral, Grandpa Max finds the head of the Plumbers lurking in the Rustbucket waiting for him. He reveals that he knows about the Omnitrix and Max's grandchildren, but is willing to leave the two alone and not drag them into service if Max "comes in out of the cold", effectively Blackmailing him into rejoining the organization.
• Think Before You Speak (MHA): After Tensei publicly blames Izuku for Tenya being injured during a training accident, he's put on probation while the HPSC investigates. This forces his father to come back out of retirement, as none of Ingenium's sidekicks are qualified to run the Iidaten Agency.
• Two Letters has this as one of its central conflicts: After over two years of seemingly thankless service, Marinette decided to stop being a superhero, passing on the Ladybug Earrings to a Sketchy Successor. One who gets the job done, albeit through... questionable methods. Due to this, various people are trying to figure out who the original Ladybug was with the intent of browbeating and guilt-tripping her into taking back the job, with one in particular attempting to manipulate matters behind the scenes to force Marinette back into the role.
• In the Unacceptable Sitch Series, Kim Possible has left the superhero scene behind her, going to college and working to build a nice, normal life. Then Shego comes in through her window, revealing that her successors "The Acceptables" aren't quite so heroic. After helping deal with them, Kim's Chronic Hero Syndrome kicks back in; she can't bring herself to step back after seeing how bad things got without her.
• What You Knead (Naruto): When Kakashi decides to get out of ANBU and start running a bakery, Hiruzen makes clear that he's only letting him enter the reserves, and that he can be reactivated if that's deemed necessary for a mission. Kakashi is rather nonplussed when he's reactivated a few years later in order to become a Jonin Instructor for Team Seven.

Films — Live-Action

• In Aliens, Ripley is called back to join the mission for her expertise after being suspended from work.
• Big Game has a retired CIA operative brought back when the president goes missing because he's just that good.
• Blade Runner, Rick Deckard is an ex-Blade Runner (Replicant hunter) who finds himself pulled back into One Last Job.
• Blazing Saddles. The Waco Kid is a Retired Gunfighter who gives up his drunken ways and becomes a hero again to help his friend Sheriff Bart save the town of Rock Ridge.
• In Commando, the bad guys kidnap John Matrix's daughter in order to force him to do one last job for them. Big mistake.
• Dreamscape. Alex Gardner gave up psychic research to use his incredible abilities to make money by betting on horse races. After being threatened by a bookie he rejoins his old mentor, who needs him for a project that has him entering the minds of sleeping people and sharing their dreams.
• The Fifth Element: Korben Dallas is a special forces soldier who gets called back into service for a mission after retiring and working as a cab driver. As per the trope, he has no interest in the mission and only ends up agreeing to it because of a case of Always Save the Girl.
• Vietnam veteran Mitchell Gant is brought out of retirement to steal the Firefox.
• Flatliners. Brilliant student David Labraccio quits medical school after being forced to break the rules to save a patient's life. Although he's reluctant to do so, fellow student Nelson recruits him for a bizarre experiment to explore beyond the boundaries of life and death.
• Game of Death: In the original version, Hai Tien (Bruce Lee) is a retired full contact world champion and initially refuses to take part in the "game of death" and only does so after his family is kidnapped by the Korean mafia.
• Hot Shots! and Hot Shots! Part Deux. In both movies, Topper Harley quit the military, but the U.S. government sought him out and recruited him for a secret mission.
• Hudson Hawk. After getting out of jail, Eddie wants to go straight but various villains coerce him into becoming a cat burglar again because they need his expertise.
• Invisible Invaders: Act One of the film has Dr. Adam Penner retiring from the Atomic Commission because he's distressed at the fact his friend and fellow colleague Dr. Karol Noymann was blown up in an atomic experiment gone wrong and the U.S. Government cares little about the fact a huge chunk of countryside got irradiated and even less about using atomic energy to help mankind, instead continuing to focus on making nuclear weapons. He swears on his friend's grave that he will no longer use science to harm others. Act Two of the film is him going back to the Atomic Commission and being assigned to research some way to destroy the titular alien invaders, who are well on their way to accomplish their promised goal of exterminating all of mankind within three days.
• K in Men in Black II is yanked from his peaceful life as a mailman to join the MIB again due to knowledge even he doesn't know he possesses.
• Mission: Impossible III begins with Ethan Hunt retired from field duty and working only as an instructor, all ready to settle down and start a family.
• Our Man Flint and In Like Flint. In both movies, Z.O.W.I.E. chief Cramden must convince his reluctant old military subordinate Derek Flint to join up and save the day.
• This is how Col. Jack O'Neil ends up involved in the events of Stargate, and becomes a recurring theme for him (see under Live Action TV below).
• Mandatory Star Trek example: In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Kirk pulls a few strings and yanks McCoy out of retirement and back into his position as CMO, overruling and ending his objections with one memorable (and slashy) line: "I need you, Bones. I need you."
• Happens a few different ways in Star Wars:
  • A New Hope: Obi-Wan Kenobi has been living in self-exile on Tatooine, until Luke Skywalker stumbles upon him while trying to recover a lost droid carrying the stolen plans to the Death Star. As it happens, said droid, R2-D2, also carries a recorded message from Princess Leia begging Obi-Wan to help in her mission. While Obi-Wan doesn't put up much of an argument, it's worth noting that he'd been hiding out from the Empire for nearly twenty years at this point.
  • Rogue One presents Jyn Erso as an unusually young version of this trope, having previously been a Child Soldier fighting with Saw Guererra and his Partisans. She was abandoned by Saw because he was afraid of what the Partisans might do if they found out her father was an Imperial weapons engineer, and struck out on her own until she was conscripted by the Rebel Alliance when they found out who her father was.
  • The Force Awakens has Han Solo and Chewbacca get roped into the new crisis soon after they find their old ship, the Millennium Falcon, which was recently stolen (not from Han) by Rey and Finn. Before they have a chance to part ways, the planet they are visiting is attacked by the First Order, who are promptly fought off by The Resistance, which is revealed to be led by Princess Leia. She convinces Han not only to help destroy Starkiller Base, but also to try and convince their son Ben to come back from the Dark Side.
  • The Last Jedi has Luke following in Obi-Wan's footsteps, living in self-exile on Acht-to. Much of the plot involves Rey's attempts to convince him to come help. Ultimately, she gives up on Luke and goes off to try and bring back Ben and save the Resistance herself, but Luke eventually comes around on his own.
• Swordfish, Stanley Jobson. although he was forced into "retirement" (convicted criminal) he is forced back into his criminal ways.
• Nick Charles in The Thin Man series of films gets pulled back into detective work after his retirement.
• Unforgiven has the Retired Gunslinger variation.
• In Welcome to the Punch, Jacob Sternwood, an English biker robber, is forced to come out of his Icelandic retirement to save his arrested son in London.
• World War Z: Gerret, who was apparently one of his country's best investigators is pulled back into action because authorities want his help in stopping the Zombie Apocalypse.
• In The X-Files: I Want to Believe, Scully works at a hospital and Mulder is still technically a wanted fugitive. The FBI recruits Scully to recruit Mulder (since she's the only one who knows where he is) to assist in investigating the X-Filean disappearence of another FBI agent. In exchange, all charges against Mulder are dropped and he's no longer a fugitive.

Literature

• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Horace Slughorn, former Potions professor, is called back to his old job so its current holder can take up the Defense Against the Dark Arts position (and because Dumbledore wants him at Hogwarts due to certain information he holds). Later, he resumes the Head of Slytherin position as well.
• A variation of this is used in Mission of Honor, where following Oyster Bay both Admiral Givens and Admiral Caparelli offer their resignations and are told by royal edict that they will not be scapegoated and their badly needed arses are going nowhere.
• In In Fury Born, retired members of the Imperial Cadre are technically only put on Inactive Reserve, meaning that the government can reactivate them if they want to.
• In the Night Angel books, Kylar tries to retire to a new city with his love interest, but since this happens in book two of a three part series, it obviously doesn't work. Both his friends and his enemies go to some considerable effort to pull him back in.
• Crosses over with Emergency Impersonation in the Relativity story "Caffeine Headache": Most of the people in the city begin acting weird due to something in the coffee. The superheroes struggle to maintain order, but the Black Torrent is in South America investigating the farms where the coffee originated. His father — the original Black Torrent — dons the superhero costume and goes out in his place.
• That's how Mackenzie Calhoun is pulled back into Starfleet (at least, the official Starfleet) in Star Trek: New Frontier. That, plus that fourth pip, plus Jean-Luc Picard saying "Get the groz in that Captain's chair, you idiot!" gets him fully back.
• Happens again and again to Wedge Antilles in the Star Wars Expanded Universe. In the New Jedi Order, Legacy of the Force, and Fate of the Jedi he's been pulled out of retirement, because not only is he pretty much the greatest pilot alive, he's a skilled and inventive tactician.
  • Illustrative example from Rebel Dream:
    Councilor Pwoe: I see now why Fey'lya never liked you, General. You should have been put out to pasture years ago.
    Wedge: With All Due Respect, Councilor, I was. If you and the rest of the Senate had handled this war in anything approaching a competent fashion, I could have been left there.
• John le Carré's George Smiley has retired at least three times and been brought back, albeit in an informal or advisory capacity, to clean up various messes made by his former colleagues in the security services. He does it enough that one character at the beginning of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy insists, much to Smiley's chagrin, that his retirement (Smiley's second at that point) is merely cover.

Live Action TV

• 24: Jack Bauer in spades. Went on indefinite leave after Season One due to the death of his wife Teri, brought back in Season Two after President David Palmer personally asked for his involvement in a nuclear threat. Left (or, more accurately, was fired from) CTU after Season Three, forced himself back into CTU from a Department of Defense desk job after CTU kept screwing up under new leadership in Season Four. Faked his death at the end of Season Four, comes back in Season Five after David Palmer is assassinated. Gets captured and tortured by the Chinese for eighteen months after Season Five, is returned in Season Six to be sacrificed to the mastermind of a terrorist plot who has a personal axe to grind with Jack Bauer. Retired and under investigation by the Senate just before Season Seven, whisked off by the FBI to help find Tony Almeida. Judging by the trailers of Season Eight, this is definitely happening again.
• Hannibal: Will Graham has retired from criminal profiling in the three year Time Skip, but Jack brings him back into it to catch the Tooth Fairy.
• A common occurance in JAG with Harmon Rabb, resigning his commission once and he also transfered back to the fleet once. Mac also resigned for the duration of one episode in the third season.
• Averted in an episode of Key & Peele with a sketch about a military officer visiting a retired veteran living in a shack in a remote location. The veteran thinks it's this trope, and keeps ranting about how he's not going to come back, no matter how they beg, even though he's "just as good as [he] ever was." The officer keeps protesting that they only want to ask him if he knows of anyone else with a comparable skill set, but the veteran just won't hear it and keeps both protesting and setting up challenges ("Try to hit me!") to prove he's the only person for the job (all of which he fails miserably).
• Happens several times to Thomas Magnum in Magnum, P.I. with the US Navy.
  • In "Mad Dogs and Englishmen", MI6 calls Higgins back up for a Fake Defector job.
• Gibbs "retires" at the end of Season 3 of NCIS. He's temporarily reinstated at the beginning of Season 4, and permanently reinstated by the end of the second episode.
• The Outer Limits (1963) episode "The Chameleon''. When aliens land on Earth, government agents hunt down former secret agent Louis Mace because he's the best man for the job of infiltrating them.
• Tommy Oliver in Power Rangers: Dino Thunder, back in the spandex after seven years off-duty, when all he wants to do now is be a science teacher. Notably, the only reason he has to unretire is because "science teacher" was his second idea of how to have a peaceful post-Ranger career; his first was "mad scientist", and was such a disaster he had to become a Ranger again just to clean up after himself. He re-retires after that.
• Bizarrely, this is how Stargate SG-1 started: Col. Jack O'Neill had retired after the events of the movie, and they had to get him to un-retire for the series. Presumably an intentional parallel to how he was recruited in the movie.

Professional Wrestling

• Just about every 'retirement' ends up rescinded via this, usually with the retired guy having no other way to try and shut a young upstart up than to prove he's (still) as good as his reputation indicates.
• Vince McMahon was pretty much retired from onscreen performing when he was kayfabe-removed from the position of COO back in the summer of 2011, during the Summer of Punk II. However, John Laurinaitis proved to be an insufficient and rather incompetent replacement, with his feud with Punk being critically panned (especially in comparison to the Summer of Punk II, which is regarded as the best feud in years). Meanwhile, Triple H, the only guy that could possibly fit into Vince's massive Bad Boss shoes, was in a feud with Brock Lesnar as a Face, and was for the most part a wrestler despite being the COO. So Vince for all intents and purposes came out of retirement to fulfill the role of the onscreen authority figure who has more power than the general manager.

Video Games

• Descent II opens with Dravis informing the player character, Material Defender, that the contract he signed with PTMC allows them to retain his services for more missions; if he declines, he won't get paid for the work he's already done.
  • And as anyone who has seen the intro for Descent III knows, he can't get a break even after Dravis tries to kill him, as his rescuers (who are the good guys) use his desire for revenge to override his desire to just settle down somewhere nice and quiet.
• Garcia the warrior in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones. Garcia gave up being a warrior to raise his son after his wife died, but Ross makes him realize that the battlefield is where he belongs after the two help Eirika and her crew drive off some bandits.
• The protagonist of Gears Tactics used to be a Colonel, but has switched to being a simple mechanic. He is adamant that his days leading soldiers are behind him...but we wouldn't have a game if COG leadership and circumstance didn't conspire to see him leading troops again, would we?
• Griftlands: Rook used to work as a spy for the Admiralty, racking up a massive bounty on his head through his history of back-stabbing and betrayal. In order to get out of the game, he faked his own death... but one of his old comrades knows the truth, and blackmails him into taking a job for them.
• In Metal Gear Solid, Solid Snake is essentially kidnapped and blackmailed into starting the events of the game.
  • In the non-canon spin-off game, Metal Gear: Ghost Babel, it happens again, minus the kidnapping part, and appears to be more willing in this case.
  • Then another gaiden game: Metal Gear Ac!d came along where Snake was approached and asked politely by Rogers to participate in the plot, with Snake being a little more humble about it.
  • Then it happens again in the fourth game. Kojima seems to really love this trope...
  • It's apparently genetic, as something similar to MGS1 happened to Big Boss to set off Portable Ops.
• A meta-example: Dred Foxx, the voice actor for Parappa The Rapper back in the late 90's/early 00's, who hasn't done any voice work before or since was called out of "retirement" to reprise Parappa in Playstation All Stars Battle Royale (2012).
• In the Sly Cooper games, all three of the main characters retired from crime at the end of the third game, with Sly choosing to join Carmelita on the law force by faking amnesia, Bentley to live out his life with Penelope, and Murray deciding to go into demolition derbies. Sure enough, all three are forced back into their old habits in Thieves in Time when pages of the Thievius Raccoonus start disappearing, courtesy of Penelope's jealousy towards Sly and Murray.
• In fourth entry of the Uncharted series, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, Nathan Drake is forced to return from his normal life as a retired treasure hunter when his brother Sam Drake came asking for his help to find the lost treasure of Captain Henry Avery to pay off a drug lord's debt. Of course, it was later revealed that the reason that forced Nathan to come back was all a lie.
• Happens to both Maverick and Vagabond in Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom.
• Shortly after the start of the Legion expansion in World of Warcraft, Thrall steps down from combat altogether in guilt after killing Garrosh Hellscream, who turned corrupt and tyrannical after Thrall made him successor as Warchief and retired to a farm on the planet Outland. In the Battle For Azeroth expansion, Varok Saurfang finds Thrall to urge him to return to the Horde and fight for it against the oppression and death mongering lead by the new Warchief Sylvanas Windrunner. After Thrall and Saurfang kill a pair of assassins sent by Sylvanas for Thrall, he finally accepts that he has to take up arms again.
• X2 is an old-school arcade shooter where the protagonist, Commander Miner, is called out of retirement to deal with an Alien Invasion.

Visual Novels

• Akatsuki no Goei: Renou Academy serves as a private school for wealthy heiresses and young men who are being trained as their bodyguards. Kaito isn't interested in this lifestyle and decides to drop out... but after he rescues Reika, she promptly uses her connections to overrule his decision, forcing him back into the academy and hiring him.

Webcomics

• In the Penny Arcade story "Paint The Line," Tycho and Gabe are forced out of retirement by the government. They're retired ping-pong players.
• Retired Scout Edin Dan from Tower of God had enough of the Tower-climbing nonsense… until Khun baited him into a bet, trying to win him for his ascending team. Edin tried to trick Khun, but got quickly Out-Gambitted.

Western Animation

• In the four-part culmination of the Cadmus Arc in Justice League, Cadmus uses this to get Captain Atom on their side by reactivating his commission to the U.S Army, under General Eiling. Atom demonstrates significant Lawful Stupid behavior by not bothering to question the obvious conflict of interest.
• Played for Laughs in a flashback in the first Season Finale of Yin Yang Yo!, where Master Yo is about to enjoy his retirement, only to be visited by spirits of past Woo Foo warriors who refuse to leave him alone unless he agrees to train Yin and Yang.

Real Life

• Many US military members were mandatorily called back into active duty on the start of the second Gulf War, in some cases because there was equipment being used that nobody knew how to maintain anymore.
  • In fact, this is a case of All There in the Manual. The enlistment papers that you sign to join indicate that there is a period of time where you agree to be called back into duty according to the needs of the service. Usually your total commitment comes out to something like eight years total, including Active Duty, the Reserves, and the "Inactive Reserves" (the guys who get rudely yoinked back into duty).
    • In theory, every able-bodied male who opted to register in the Selective Service (that's all able-bodied American males between the ages of 18 and 25) can be called into military duty, but any circumstances where that might actually happen could probably be considered horrific by themselves.
  • Officers are theoretically subject to recall indefinitely, and must keep two uniforms in case it happens.
• Retired programmers were rehired en masse to fix older computer systems affected by the Y2K bug.
• Imran Khan was called out of retirement to play for Pakistan in the 1992 Cricket world cup - Pakistan's president even compared it to a soldier being called on to fight for his country. It worked out well, as his team came out of nowhere to upset favorites Australia and New Zealand to reach the final, then win the tournament after trouncing England.
• Gerd von Rundstedt was one of Germany's top field marshals during World War II. He had retired in 1938 after over forty years of service, only for Hitler to reinstate him to lead the Heer into Poland, France, and Ukraine. Despite having acquitted himself very well (though committing the usual spate of War Crimes, of course) during Operation Barbarossa, during Operation Typhoon he was fired from his position as the commander of Army Group South for ordering a 'cowardly and unnecessary retreat'. In fact a severely-depleted force under his command (First Panzer Army) had accidentally attacked a Soviet force more than five times stronger than it by trying to take the Donbass, and was then threatened with encirclement and annihilation by it ^note  Runstedt had been told by German military intelligence (FHO) that the Soviets could offer 'no significant resistance' to such an operation (due to them supposedly having run out of trained reserves and weapons) . In the summer of 1944 he was fired again, this time because he was "difficult to work with" ^note  He had a 'too old for this shit' attitude that caused him to mouth off whenever he felt like. But his cardinal sin was insisting too hard that the Normandy landings were probably the real deal and Calais a diversion, something that German military intelligence contradicted , and was then brought back again as the Germans were forced to withdraw from France altogether and had to quickly re-form a new defensive line on the Franco-German border.
• Korean Admiral Yi Sun-sin was Gracefully Demoted after being Scape Goated for the fall of the outpost he'd led, but his requests for resupplies and more manpower had gone ignored, and the death of his father convinced him it was time to retire. When Japan invaded Korea in 1592, a friend of his pulled some strings and invoked this trope to have Yi lead the Korean Navy - a wise decision, as Yi went 23-0 at sea, without ever losing any ships.
• Santa Clara County’s Public Health Officer Sara Cody, facing the 2020 Pandemic called in retired State Public Health Officer Karen Smith and retired County Public Health Officer Marty Fenstersheib. The morning she learned of the county’s first coronavirus case she was already calling two of her most-trusted advisers, now retired, from the health department. Karen Smith was on a girls’ ski weekend at Donner Summit when she got Cody’s call. "When do you need me?" Smith asked. "Right now." Meet the doctor who ordered the Bay Area’s coronavirus lockdown, the first in the U.S.
• The President of Italy, Sergio Mattarella, was re-elected against his own will in 2022.^{How does it work?} Italian Presidential elections are conducted by the Italian Parliament, and the ballot isn't a "tick the pre-printed name of a candidate" one - so all the votes are write-in.
• Indian politician and polyglot P V Narasimha Rao had served in every senior important cabinet ministerial position under the Gandhi governments of the 70s and 80s. He had retired from politics in 1989, when his party, the Congress was staring at electoral defeat. In 1991, it seemed as though the Congress would be swept back into power and former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was all set for a political comeback. But when Gandhi was assassinated in May of 91, the Congress needed someone to be the Prime Minister. Narasimha Rao was seen as the most qualified for the job, so he was forced out of retirement to become India’s Prime Minister.

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