Follow TV Tropes

Following

Recruit the Muggles

Go To

"In the end, the world didn't really need a super man. Just a brave one."

This trope describes a moment in a series, usually involving superheroes, in which the general public, either at the request of the heroes themselves, or of their own volition, directly come to their aid and fight alongside them. The series generally has established by now that this would normally never happen, because ordinary people are the ones that often need to be saved. However, in this case, the public may have decided it was time to pay the heroes back for all they've done. Needless to say, if the citizens do this on their own, it can be considered a massive sign of admiration and respect for the hero they are willing to protect. Alternatively, if done on the part of the heroes, it can mean that they consider the citizens to be their allies.

Contrast with Apathetic Citizens and Bystander Syndrome. See also Muggle Best Friend, Badass Bystander, Wounded Hero, Weaker Helper, and Now, Let Me Carry You.


Examples

    open/close all folders 

    Anime and Manga 
  • Castle in the Sky: When the air pirates chase Pazu and Sheeta through Pazu's hometown, he yells for help and quickly gets it when the townspeople come out to face down the pirates, with the most notable moment of this being a boxing match between Pazu's boss and The Brute.
  • Used in Negima! Magister Negi Magi during the Mahora Festival. The mages were outnumbered by an army of demon-powered robots and mechas, so they decided to recruit several thousand muggles and arm them with magical weapons. (Fortunately, both sides were using non-lethal weapons.) Of course, since the muggles must not know anything about magic, the mages told them that it was a giant role-playing game.

    Comic Books 

  • Vader's Quest: When Luke is blinded and helpless, a crowd of locals (both longtime Rebel sympathizers and Neutral No Longer civilians) come together to pull a Go Through Me gambit against Darth Vader and take out his stormtroopers.

    Film—Animated 
  • At the end of Encanto, in a non-action version of the trope, the ordinary townspeople help the Madrigal family rebuild their home after the Madrigals lose their magical powers.
  • The LEGO Movie: Near the climax of the film, Wyldstyle takes over the TV station to broadcast to the whole world, motivating them to start building their own creations to fight back against Lord Business's plan to freeze everybody.
  • The Lion King (1994): The lionesses provide an animal version. They are victims of Scar's cruel misrule for most of the film, but rise up to help Simba fight it in the climax.
  • Scooby-Doo in Where’s My Mummy?: The gang recruit a bunch of Egypt-obsessed Luddites they encounter to pose as the real army of the undead and throw of the group already impersonating those mummies as a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax. When the deception fails, the gang’s new allies are then willing to fight the original fake Army of the Undead.
  • The climax of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem sees many ordinary New Yorkers summoned by a news broadcast helping the mutants slow down the kaiju-like villain and toss around the chemical that will turn him back to normal closer every time the Turtles lose it.

    Film—Live Action 
  • 3 Ninjas: In Knuckle Up, while the main focus of the reservation fight scene is on the main characters, there are a few brief shots of the previously cowed tribal members fighting back as well.
  • The Apple Dumpling Gang: In both the book and the film, everyone in town who has a gun goes racing to break up the bank robbery.
  • Avatar: The various native tribes all gather together to fight the Evil Colonialists and the local animals soon join them in a Gaia's Vengeance way. In a Deleted Scene, Max and a couple dozen other scientists left back at the base get a Neutral No Longer moment (although Max has been covertly aiding the protagonists since earlier on) and storm the command center that is coordinating the battle against their friends.
  • Black Adam (2022): The citizens of Kahndaq rally to fight the undead Mooks the Big Bad is raising in the climax and keep them from aiding the evil sorcerer (who is keeping the heroes pretty busy by himself anyway).
  • Death Wish 3: At first, Kersey just has one sidekick when he engages the street gang in the final sene. Then, more and more neighborhood people start arming themselves to help him, and then even the cop investigating Kersey's Vigilante Man actions joins in.
  • Frankenstein (1931): The famous Torches and Pitchforks mob of villagers in the final act set out to help Dr. Frankenstein kill the monster to rescue one of his victims and avenge another as soon as they learn of his existence.
  • Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers: When several trucks full of bar patrons drive up to the police station to investigate the blackout (caused by Michael's spree-killing rampage), Big Good Dr. Loomis tells them what is happening and encourages them to try to find and kill Michael before he can hurt anyone else. They are useful during a couple of moments but some of them kill an innocent local during a moment of panic.
  • The Magnificent Seven (1960): The villagers hire the eponymous gunmen to defend them against the outlaws, but shoot plenty of antagonists themselves (and take plenty of corresponding losses) in the climax.
  • Ready Player One (2018):
    • Nearly every gamer in the virtual world heads out to help fight with their avatar in the final battle and help the heroes save the Oasis from being take over by unworthy forces.
    • In the real world, when Sorrento chases Wade into Wade’s neighborhood, quite a few human residents gather together and briefly try to pull an angry Go Through Me move before Sorrento pulls out a gun.
  • RoboCop 3: An explicit example comes when Sgt. Reed deputizes the entire city of Detroit and leads them into battle against the OCP rehabs.
  • Silver Bullet: Almost every townsperson with a name or dialogue joins in a massive effort to hunt down the werewolf after the sheriff steps aside and confines their efforts following a Shamed by a Mob speech. They accomplish little besides giving the werewolf a few more victims.
  • There's a less explicit example in the first Spider-Man movie, when a group of people standing on the bridge start throwing rocks and bricks at the Green Goblin, in order to get him away from Spider-Man.
  • Superman II: After Superman is apparently defeated during his battle against the three Kryptonian supervillains, the normal humans watching the battle decide to attack the villains in hand-to-hand combat. They are all literally blown away by the villains' super breath.
  • Zombieland: Double Tap: To their own surprise, the Badass Crew of Zombie Apocalypse Heroes find a way for the couple of dozen pacifistic hippies at the Babylon commune to help survive the final battle against a huge horde of zombies. Specifically, they have those people make a gauntlet with shields and herd the zombies into a trap.

    Literature 
  • In Ciaphas Cain: the Traitor's Hand, a Chaos battleship is destroyed when it tries to massacre a giant swarm of merchantships. The Imperial cruiser present managed to wreck the battleship's main weapons when it was already committed to its course, and then the merchantships swarmed it and nibbled it to death with their little defensive guns.
  • Defied in The Dresden Files. Recruiting the muggles, at least in a mass scale, is considered the nuclear option for the supernatural world. Not in the least because they now have nukes. There are subtle cases, though, whether it's the White Council releasing books to siphon off power of a dangerous entity by having too many people drawing on it at once, or the White Court releasing a how-to book on killing Black Court Vampires in the form of Bram Stoker.
    • When the Fomor invade Chicago during Battle Ground, Harry and Baron Marcone both recruit small armies of Chicagoans to defend the city. Naturally, Mab had planned for this and stockpiled weapons and ammunition for them inside the Cloud Gate, a.k.a. "The Bean".
  • Ex-Heroes: Before the Zombie Apocalypse, George and the other superheroes would have never dreamed of having civilians risk their lives by fighting alongside them. Since then, they need and welcome the help of a large, armed Men of Sherwood force of normal humans to prevent zombie Zerg Rushes from succeeding while the heroes go on scavenging missions or defend the walls of their city.
  • Harry Potter: While the trope-naming muggles never get involved in the final battle against Voldemort, the staff and many of the older Hogwarts students are rallied to help fight Voldemort even though many of them were previously uninvolved in the war. Later, the local shopkeepers and families of the students also show up to help.
  • The Institute: As the sheriff’s department gets shot up by black ops thugs, just about every local (or the parents of younger ones) who the main character befriended earlier show up to provide some lethal assistance.
  • Junior Jedi Knights: In Lyric's World, Anakin and Tahiri accompany a crowd of Melodies to act as their security against predators, but end up getting a lot of welocme help from a crowd of Melodies armed with improvised weapons after one of those predators proves difficult for the young Jedi to handle.
  • Many books in The Last Mountain Man series (such as Trail of the Mountain Man, Journey of the Mountain Man, War of the Mountain Man, and Honor of the Mountain Man) have an army of outlaws raiding one town or another and finding all of the locals pulling Badass Bystander feats (sometimes at the direction of local gunfighter Smoke Jensen, sometimes more spontaneously).
  • The ultimate fear of the great guilds in The Pillars of Reality is the Commons learning their secrets, and they make a lot of enemies by treating the Commons badly. This makes recruiting the Commons (who aren't suppose to be able to use either mage or mechanic arts) a pretty effective technique for the heroes.
  • The Saga of Darren Shan: At one point in the conflict between the vampires and the vampanese (a fundamentalist offshoot clan), the vampanese begin recruiting human mercenaries they call "vampets". Vampires react to this as a war crime, as the vampets are not bound by traditional honour codes which forbid the use of guns, allowing them to mow down hordes of vampires with ease (previously vampires limited themselves to crossbows, while vampanese refused to use any form of ranged weapon at all). Eventually the vampires retaliate by establishing their own human corps called "vampirites".
  • The Scholomance: While the students of the Scholomance are all magic users, most of them they tend to rely on Orion and El to save them from seriously dangerous monsters. In the final act of book 2, everyone in the school joins El and Orion in a brainstorming effort to get everyone out alive while not leaving them vulnerable to the mals In the outside world, and then they band together to implement that plan, at no small risk to themselves.

    Live-Action Television 
  • Andor: In the season one finale, a neighborhood of Ferrix residents from many walks of life (mechanics, doctor, watchman, belllringer, etc) who are among the people the Rebel Alliance is trying to free from the Empire’s tyranny end up rising up to fight back against the local garrison at a time when it is threatening the rebel heroes.
  • Jeremiah: In "Crossing Jordan", Smith rallies the citizens of a town Sims is attacking to fight off the people preparing to enslave them for the crime of picking a side in the coming war.
  • During the finale of Power Rangers in Space, Angel Grove is invaded, and the villain demands that the Power Rangers show themselves, or else they will start killing civilians. Bulk and Skull, the oblivious comic relief of the series, step up and falsely claim to be Power Rangers. Soon, other citizens start joining in with them, and when the real rangers do appear, they publicly announce their secret identities and morph in full view of the city before leading them into combat.
    • In the finale of Power Rangers Mystic Force the Rangers and allies have used up all their magic and are still facing off against the villain. Toby and Phineas lead the townspeople and forest folk, respectively, to give all their latent power to the Rangers to let them defeat the villain.
  • In the season three finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer the entire Sunnydale High senior class join with Buffy to fight off the Mayor and his minions.
  • Tremors:
    • In "Shriek and Destroy", the townspeople spend most of the episode as potential monster victims Burt and Tyler have to protect. However, once they need more people to fire single shot rifles at the approaching monsters, they are happy to accept the help of the local baseball team, who proceed to make the heroes glad they sought that help.
    • In "Blast from the Past", the students at the survival course Burt is teaching mostly stay out of things throughout the conflict but ultimately help capture the Monster of the Week with their homemade nets.

    Podcasts 
  • A common theme in The Adventure Zone:
    • The Adventure Zone: Balance:
      • Lucretia recruits Angus McDonald, Boy Detective, to work for the Bureau due to his help in solving the Murder on the Rockport Limited. He essentially becomes a Voice with an Internet Connection for the Tres Horny Boys, although Taako later begins teaching him some magic.
      • Deliberately invoked by Griffin in Story and Song: after the two Voidfish broadcast Johann's song, every single person in the planar system (including nearly every single named character in the podcast) suddenly gains Bardic Inspiration to fight against the Hunger. Notably, as the narrator points out, this includes the listener as well, as the planar system includes our own.
        Johann: You're going to have to fight ... and you're gonna win!
      • In the same episode, Taako recruits a modern, Earthly boy working in his family's taco truck named Joaquin to help him learn how to make tacos. Both of their food trucks explode, and they each gain more powerful magic powers than before.
    • The Adventure Zone: Amnesty:
      • In a sense, this is Ned's role in the Pine Guard: Duck and Aubrey have their Chosen and Magic powers, Mama has years of monster fighting experience under her belt, and the other residents of the Lodge are superhuman crypitds. Ned, on the other hand, is just a petty thief and con man caught up in something way bigger than himself.
      • Invoked more directly when fighting the Water; the Pine Guard recruits the help of city worker Pigeon in order to allow them to divert water away from H2Whoa: That Was Fun! while they fight the abomination.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Champions. If a hero achieved a high enough score with a Presence attack, either (a) he could ask any nearby normals for help against a supervillain or (b) the normals could decide on their own to help against the villain.

    Video Games 
  • In The Wonderful 101, by drawing a circle around civilians you can recruit them to your team for the duration of the stage.

    Western Animation 
  • Justice League: In "Patriot Act", when a group of heroes are attacked during a parade, several kids try to help them by throwing rocks at the villain and then the whole crowd marches up to face him down before he can finish off the defeated heroes.
  • Legion Of Superheroes 2006: In "Message in a Bottle", the citizens of Kandor are initially terrified of the villains, but ultimately step up to give the heroes some backup against them. This backup proves to be unexpectedly formidable when the Kandorians are exposed to a yellow sun and get the same powers as Superboy.
  • Superman: The Animated Series: In many episodes Detective Turpin and his SCU troopers are just a source of Exposition and a g-rated Red Shirt Army who get battered around by the villains, respectively, and are rarely included in anything big by Superman. In "Apokolips Now Part 2", the situation is desperate enough for a Superman to need them (and later on a large crowd of civilians) to help fight Darkseid's Mooks, and they handle the job admirably.

Top