Training The Peaceful Villagers - Television Tropes & Idioms

There's a big bad gang/army out there that wants to sack the peaceful village for whatever reason. The reason the heroes don't just smite the villains is usually that there are too many of them for the heroes to deal with; although this may conflict with their previous One Man Army exploits.

Either way, it's time to teach the villagers to stop being victims and learn how to defend themselves. Expect some complaining about "losing their peaceful way of life." If there's a Wasteland Elder around, expect them to back the hero and shush the young'in.

The villagers will fight back with pitchforks, plowshares and frying pans. It will also include many Bamboo Technology traps involving previously innocuous items, like laundry buckets filled with boiling water. Usually, the outlaw band/army should have been able to beat them, had they taken the villagers seriously and fought with actual strategy; but their downfall usually lay in rushing into traps.

In some instances, the villagers may have existed under the oppression of the Mongol Hordes for years or even generations without even thinking of fighting back. Not, that is, until The Hero shows up. Bathing in the glow of his shining example, the common people finally rise up to combat the Evil Overlords. This has Unfortunate Implications if the hero is Mighty Whitey and the villagers are Noble Savages.

With the enemy dead or on the run, and the villagers converted to the notion of violence for self-defense, the heroes leave.

Examples

Anime and Manga

Cyborg 009 uses the trope and ends the episode with a subtle but ominous picture of one of the formerly peaceful (not to mention god-like powerful) aliens callously trampling over a flower.

Comic Books

Done darkly in an early Groo The Wanderer comic. Groo trains a peaceful village to fight against a horde of bandits. In the process, the village and all it's crops are destroyed. Having no other way to make a living now, the villagers and the bandits unite into a giant bandit army that overruns nearby cities.
Elf Quest: When their revered Mother of Memory is entrapped on the spirit plane by an enemy they can't begin to comprehend, the peaceful Sun Folk ask the few remaining Wolfriders to teach them weapon skills. No, they never use their skills in any useful way during the main storyline, but at least learning to shoot arrows makes them feel like they're doing something.
Shamelessly parodied in a Thrud the Barbarian story. The Xena-eat-your-heart-out-gorgeous warrior woman Lymara shows the village women how to kill two men. She drops her sword and bends over to get it, giving the men a great view of her cleavage. The two men stop and leer. She swiftly beheads them both with a cry of "Hah! Sexist pigs!" Then she looks at the (realistic) peasant women for a moment and asks, "On second thoughts, who knows how to shoot a bow and arrow?"

Film

The Ur-film example: Seven Samurai. Most of the examples below are homages if not outright rip-offs.
The Magnificent Seven, for instance, is a direct western adaptation of Kurosawa's film.
- And Battle Beyond the Stars, the Recycled In Space version.
- And Samurai 7, the Recycled With Humongous Mecha version.
- And Seven Swords, a chinese version.
Done in a silly manner in the movie Three Amigos. The villagers couldn't do much except dig and sew, which was a problem since the heroes couldn't do much except pretend to be cowboys in silent movies. But with a plan cobbled together from the big finales of their various movies, a Rousing Speech that got a bit lost in the middle, and a lot of digging and sewing by the villagers, the day was saved.
Applied Phlebotinum film example: Galaxy Quest... again, not that the actual heroes have the skills that they're given credit for, either.
The Spaghetti Western They Call Me Trinity has the heroes teaching a community of pacifists to fight back against the villain who wants the land they've built on. The villagers are so peaceful that they have no idea how to fight, and the heroes end up repeatedly clobbering them during the training exercises.
The Ant Colony from A Bugs Life. Even the grasshoppers recognize the Ants' potential threat (They outnumber the grasshoppers, 100 to 1), but the Ants don't... until it is expressly spelled out for them.
- To be fair, only the leader of the grasshoppers got it at first, and had to expressly spell it out to them, too.
The whole premise in Defiance, which is about a group of Jew refugees. As they have gathered more people, they begin training able bodied people (including women) to fight for survival with weapons taken from the hands of dead Nazis.
In Army of Darkness, Ash is inexplicably seen teaching the medieval soldiers how to use a halberd, which they should know better than him. This is probably part of the joke.
The movie High Plains Drifter has Clint Eastwood as No Name Given train the villagers to fight. Darker And Edgier because they aren't peaceful, just cowards, and he really doesn't care much for them.
Subverted in Ip Man, where our hero trains the workers at Quan's factory in Wing Chun to help them resist a group of bandits, only for the bandits to prevail anyway until Ip Man pulls a Big Damn Heroes moment.
This is how they deal with the bad guys in Dragonheart
Done rather amusingly in Blazing Saddles.
- ...and then outright parodied in Robin Hood Men In Tights, where the Peaceful Villagers are so inept that Robin and company have to do pretty much everything themselves.
In The36th Chamber Of Shaolin, the eponymous "36th Chamber" of the hero's training is to find and train commoners to retaliate against an evil regime of some kind. Although he pretty much does all the killing himself, it's an interesting coda to the most protracted Gonna Fly Now Montage in martial arts cinema.

Literature

Wolves Of The Calla, the fifth book in Stephen King's Dark Tower series, concerns the ka-tet defending a village from a raid of bandits. It's a very intentional homage to The Seven Samurai, which becomes a plot point when the fourth wall starts falling away later in the series.
This is the plot of one of the Animorphs books, where the peaceful villagers and the threatening invaders are both aliens. Also joining the fight are a group of Muggles who are helping to resist the invasion simply because they Jumped At The Call. They're all Trekkies on their yearly camp out.
The Redwall series takes this to ridiculous extremes. The villagers are frequently absurdly outnumbered, pacifists who have never fought a day in their lives, and the villains bother to use actual strategy.
- Defenders' Advantage—it's commonly accepted that to take a walled city or castle (which Redwall Abbey pretty much is) using medieval weaponry, the attackers need to outnumber the defenders by at least ten to one.
- Too bad the strategy never seems to extend to using siege weaponry to knock a wall down and rebuild it. The plans are still around, aren't they?
Part of the ending of the book Magic's Pawn by Mercedes Lackey has the untrained-in-teaching-combat main character attempt to teach a village how to defend itself. This turns out to be absolutely useless.
Harry Potter does this with 'Dumbledore's Army' in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Used in The Sworn Sword when Dunk's current master gets into a border dispute with a much more powerful neighbour. Dunk sees the futility in pitting their poorly trained peasant conscripts against a larger force of professional men-at-arms. Ultimately a bloodbath is averted.
A less known Orson Scott Card book, Enchanted, plays with this a little. The protagonist is actually the one being trained in fighting (he never really does catch on) and eventually passes on an actually valid way to let villagers beat heavily armored knights who also happen to outnumber them when their own knights are obviously not to be trusted. So what does he do? He researches explosives and shrapnel grenades, plus hang gliders and teaches them how to use said skills.
- He researches grenades and hang gliders in the present, then time-travels back to Middle Ages southern Russia and teaches the locals there. Not really the same thing.
Kel does this with the occupants of her refugee camp in the final book of her quartet, because she doesn't have enough guards to keep them safe.
Kelsior does this in the first book of Brian Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy.
Murphy's Militia.
Subverted in The Wheel Of Time with the Tuatha'an (an ethnic Expy of the Roma), who follow a pacifistic moral code known as, "The Way of the Leaf". The Tuatha'an refuse to defend themselves even against what are essentially the Hordes of Hell, much to the anguish of Perrin and Aram, a Tuatha'an who becomes "Lost" and learns to fight when his parents are killed by the Trollocs.
- However, played straight when Perrin rallies the people of Two Rivers to defend themselves against first the Trollocs, and then the Children of the Light.
  - Of course, the Two Rivers folk turn out to be pretty skilled already, being some of the best archers in the world and having the blood of Manetheren, which counts for a lot in Randland.
In Alan Quartermain, when a Masaii warband kidnaps the daughter of a missionary, the Zulu warrior Umslopogaas makes the plan for the parishioners to attack and annihilate the war party.

Live Action TV

Xena Warrior Princess has done this more than once.
MacGyver likewise has to train a peaceful village in a República del Plátano to fight their drug lord oppressors, in the episode "The Golden Triangle."
Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode "Cave Dwellers," in which The Hero Ator tries to convince a village to fight. Subverted when the villagers instead trap Ator and hand him over to their oppressors - and then the Mongol Hordes slaughter the villagers anyway.
The Enterprise episode "Marauders" (unpopular because it's such a textbook case of this trope, complete with "teach a man to fish" quote).
Combined with a Stable Time Loop in a particularly bizarre episode of Kung Fu: The Legend Continues. A time-displaced Peter is surprised to learn the besieged group of Shaolin monks he's landed among have no clue how to fight off their attackers. The rudimentary self-defense he teaches them eventually became the basis for the kung fu his Shaolin father taught him.
Done in the third season finale of Buffy and many a character's Crowning Moment Of Awesome.
Rimmer tried this with a group of entertainers and pacifists in "Meltdown," and expended the few troops that survived his training on a suicide mission.
An episode of Merlin uses this trope after the title character's home village is attacked by raiders.
Doctor Who did this in the original Dalek story, only rather than being ignorant the Thalls where instead morally opposed to violence due to the wars of their past.
Star Trek subverts this in "Errand of Mercy," when war breaks out and Kirk and Spock try to get the apparently primitive citizens of the planet Organia to side with the Federation. However, the Organians aren't interested and seemingly go along with the Klingons seizing control of the planet while resolutely protecting the Starfleet officers, who are trying to rouse a resistance, with incomprehensible motives and means. In the end, the Organians suddenly stop the war themselves and reveal that they are actually energy beings of godlike power and were only humoring the warring powers around until their patience ran out.
- Played straighter in "A Private Little War" where Kirk decides to arm and train the Hill People of a planet who are facing an population, The Town People, who are being given increasing sophisticated weapons and manipulated by the Klingons to attack their peaceful neighbors. However, Kirk is fully aware that while he is allowing the Hill People to defend themselves, he is ruefully aware that he is starting an arms race that will plague the planet.
- Also somewhat subverted in "The Omega Glory" where Kirk has to stop a meglomaniac Star Fleet officer from doing this. Of course the peaceful villagers turn out to be commies and the brutish raiders U.S.A. okay, so it's totally fine to leave them to their fate.
Played straight in the Robin Of Sherwood episode 'The Seven Swords of Wayland'.
Subverted in Robin Hood. In an early S3 episode Robin rallies the villagers and tells them that one day he will call upon them to fight; likewise a press release revealed that Tuck would be organising a "people's army." Turns out that what Robin and Tuck had in mind was for the villagers to stage a peaceful sit-in protest.
One episode of Firefly ("Heart of Gold") involved the crew digging in to help train and defend the local... whorehouse, complete with montage. It works.

Tabletop Games

This is in the backstory of Mortarion, Primarch of the Death Guard Space Marine legion in Warhammer 40K. He was adopted by one of the overlords of the planet he was found on, but later escaped into the valleys, where the air was breathable for normal humans, and trained them to resist the overlords (who used them as slaves and experimental subjects), forming the Death Guard (not originally Marines, but the legion took the name) to fight. The Salamanders' Primarch pulled off a similar trick, beating Eldar raiders around the head with his blacksmithing hammers.
In Traveller, mercenaries are often hired to do this.
Frightning prevalent with experienced players in D&D . To the point that entire campagains This Troper has Dmed become filled with 'peaceful villages' that are actually death traps for monsters below a given power level (without some kind of resistance.) This does leave the PC's with the serius threats, but also makes invasion plots rather self defeating. Taken to the extreme by one particulurly industrius wizard mass producing 3/day wands of magic missle and distributing them.

Video Games

You had to do this in Jagged Alliance 2 if you wanted to keep Deidranna from re-taking any liberated towns.
In Pikmin, the titular creatures are nigh-extinct until Captain Olimar assembles them and exploits their sheer numbers and abilities. When he takes off, the Pikmin start fending for themselves.
In the Video Game Roadwar 2000, your gang can recruit the starving "Needy" people, who are hands down the most worthless of all the post-apocalypse city wanderers who can possibly join you... but with a good drill sergeant, you can promote these recruits into worthy gang members after only a few firefights or road battles to harden them.
The western chapter of Live A Live mostly features Sunset (the hero) and his rival/partner Maddg searching the town for items to give to the peaceful townfolks to use as traps (ranging from dynamite and ropes, to horse droppings, a pachinko machine, and a naughty poster), in order to decimate the villain gang.
In Fallout 3, you can help the population of Big Town defend themselves from Super Mutants with guns, robots, mines, or even just hiding inside depending on what skills you have. However, you may find it more amusing to leave them to die.
In Mount And Blade, villages may ask you to help teach them how to fight better to fend off bandit attacks. You had to drill them, beat up several of the recruits and then fight off an attack after completion. Their relation with you improves as a result.
The entire point of Battle Realms. Unlike other Real Time Strategy games, you can not actually purchase new units (aside from Heroes). Instead, you train the worker units (aka Peasants) into different schools to get the units you want. Training them again in one of the remaining schools mixes their education and makes them into different units; and so on.

Webcomics

Subverted in Sluggy Freelance. Torg is trapped in a Mirror Universe that is the very epitome of niceness and pacifism, under attack from demonic hordes. He runs through a Training The Peaceful Villagers montage to teach them how to fight back. In their first and only battle, the one soldier smashes a demon's toe before running away in remorse, and the Staff Chick actually heals the enemy's wounds.
Also subverted in Tales Of The Questor where the town of Freedom Downs has a Farmer's Militia for self defense and if Quentyn is any indication, the standard training he got long before he decided on his calling was damn good stuff.
Played straight in 'No Need for Bushido'' when the four man band of protagonists attempts to avert a war. It's worked thus far.

Western Animation

The first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon did this with a planet of "peaceful space turtles".
One episode of Samurai Jack had Jack teaching a group of peaceful monkey-men to defend themselves from a thieving, bullying rival tribe, in exchange for their giving him some training to enhance his jumping abilities.
Done in an episode of Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go.
Bounty Hamster. Parodied in "The Good, the Bad, and the Adorable", most notably in the scene where the cute alien villagers decide that the best solution is to steal their saviour's spaceship and run away en masse.

Real Life

Truth In Television, to an extent. Certain special forces groups worldwide, including the British SAS and the US Army's Green Berets, are sometimes tasked with raising up rag-tag revolutionary armies to bring down governments perceived as exploitative or antagonistic. The peacefulness of the villagers in question, however, varies wildly.
- This troper recalls Tom Clancy's Shadow Warriors saying that such a thing is trained and tested for to American Special Forces trainees.
- Afghanistan is the key example most folks will use. The villagers were never peaceful, but their pre 1900 rifles didn't do squat to attack helicopters. US trainers and assistance come in and give them stinger missiles and not long after the Soviets learn how America felt in Vietnam.
  - Ironically, this happened in Vietnam too. There was a group of tribes collectively known as the Montegnards, who were routinely harassed by BOTH the North AND South Vietnamese. US Special Forces would provide them with training and some supplies and tools, and in return they ended up proving to be very resourceful allies on the battlefield, who provided American forces with LOTS of helpful information. Too bad we didn't use that knowledge to make our lives easier in the past two decades' conflicts.
- America itself only had a small standing army between 1865 and 1916, and especially between 1920 and 1940. Even in the latter case, the ability to raise an army as quickly as they did surprised a lot of other countries' leadership, on both sides.
  - Of course there is the example of the Prussian officer Baron von Steuben who during the revolutionary war taught the ill trained American Contintental Army how to fight as well as the British.
This troper recalls reading a Real Life story that might count as a deconstruction. The Malaysian village in question had no violence, or even any words for violence. When they were taught to fight when the area became a war zone, they surprised their "teachers" by becoming frenzied and intoxicated with the bloodshed, since they didn't fully understand the effects of their actions. My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I think they're all dead now.

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