A Ragtag Bunch of Misfits is pulled together on emergency to fulfill some grand goal. They succeed. And then realize that they are quite good at working with each other and can stay a team for the future crises to come.
Compare Newcomer Saves the Day, where an established team realizes that a rookie will make a great addition to their group. Contrast The Fellowship Has Ended and We Were Your Team.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- In One Piece the Straw Hat Grand Fleet is formed by seven powerful pirate leaders who came to respect and honor Captain Luffy and the rest of the Straw Hat pirates when the Straw Hats saved them from Pirate Warlord Doflamingo's powerful crew and Luffy personally defeated Doflamingo. When Luffy tells them he doesn't want them and they should do what they like, they decide to serve him willingly anyway. Luffy agrees to the compromise of them coming to each others aide if one is in danger.
Comic Books
- Inverted in Batgirl: Year One, where a team-up between Barbara and Black Canary ends with the following dialogue:
Black Canary: Promise me we won't make these team-ups a regular thing.
Batgirl: Done. - This is one of the classic superhero team origins. The original Justice League of America realized they work well together after fending off giant alien monsters. The founding Avengers realized they work well together after thwarting a scheme by Loki, Norse god of mischief. In both cases, the heroes each responded to the crisis individually, and once they'd converged on a single location, realize they could work better as a group than alone. After Avengers Dissassembled, the New Avengers were formed under the same circumstances (working together to fight a mass jailbreak of supervillains).
Films — Animated
- The Great Mouse Detective: After Rattigan is defeated, Dawson starts to leave to go look for lodging. Basil is trying to tell him to stay when there's a knock on the door.
Lady Mouse: Is this the home of the famous Basil of Baker Street?
Dr. Dawson: Indeed it is, miss. You look as if you're in some kind of trouble.
Lady Mouse: Oh, I am. I am.
Dr. Dawson: Then you have come to precisely the right place.
Basil: Ah, allow me to introduce my trusted associate Dr. Dawson, with whom I do all of my cases. Isn't that right, doctor?
Dr. Dawson: Oh? Why, yes. By all means.
Films — Live-Action
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. After the Big Bad is defeated, Captain Nemo suggests that they stay together.
"I have long hidden away from the world, now I wish to see it anew as the century turns. You're all welcome to join me."
- Casablanca:
Rick: Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Live Action TV
- In the pilot of Leverage the crew, four thieves who worked alone before this job and one honest man running them, find they had a lot of fun working with others and learning new skills. Best seen in the last minutes of the episode.
[After the walk-away]
Hardison: [Coming up behind Nate] Yo, I never had that cool a time on a job.
Nate: It's a walk-away-
Hardison: And I have focus issues, brother. You kept me right on.
[Parker then walks up with them]
Parker: I'm really good at one thing.
Nate: Parker...
Parker: Only one thing and that's it, but you. You know other things, and, and, I can't stop doing my one thing. I can't retire.
[Eliot then walks up with them]
Eliot: You want to know what I think?
Nate: Not really.
Eliot: How long before you fall apart again.
Nate: Oh, I'm touched.
Eliot: Yeah, well, a guy like you can't be out of the game, alright? [Phone rings] That's why you were a wreck. You need the chase.
Nate: Yeah, I'll manage. [Answers the phone] Yeah?
[Everyone stops and Nate sighs as he sees Sophie sitting right in front of them on her phone. She rises and walks up to Nate and the rest]
Sophie: You pick the jobs.
Nate: My job is helping people. I find bad guys.
Sophie: Well, go find some bad guys. Bad guys have money. Black king. White knight.
Video Games
- This is, after the vignettes that make up everyones' backstories, the way the party forms in Wild ARMs 3. After the initial mission together, three of them are quite happy to split up again, while the fourth (who's the Wide-Eyed Idealist) is anxious to stick together.
- In Freedom Force Versus the Third Reich, Minute Man suggests that Red Oktober join the Freedom Force after helping them beat Nuklear Winter. She refuses.
- Due to an Enemy Mine situation in Advance Wars: Dual Strike, Sonja and Lash.
Lash: Tee hee hee! I'm going to break everything!
Sonja: I don't understand why we work so well together... - Happens in XCOM 2: Legacy Ops. After the fall of the original XCOM organization, Central Officer Bradford hooks up with a small group of random survivors and scavengers who are desperately trying to stay one step ahead of Advent and live off the land. As the campaign progresses, the group collectively realizes that they actually compliment each other really well, and they gradually go from simply surviving to actively thriving - and from desperately avoiding the alien forces to actively picking fights with them, Good Feels Good style.
Web Comics
- In Guilded Age, the band of adventurers, seen at the beginning of each chapter in Flash Forwards, finally come together (after a false start that included a Jerkass Warrior Poet) at the end of Chapter 6, having successfully rescued one of their own.
Syr'Nj: Maybe we're all better off with each other than without [...] Friendship doesn't always mean we'll agree. But we don't have to see eye to eye to stand shoulder to shoulder.
Western Animation
- In Justice League, J'onn calls upon six other superheroes and heroines to defend Earth against the Imperium, but when the enemy is defeated, they decide to make the arrangement permanent, since they work well together.
- Ironically, throughout Superman: The Animated Series and The New Batman Adventures, whenever the Man of Steel and the Caped Crusader have to work with each other, they both end up dissatisfied and recoil from the idea of permanent cooperation.
- Batman lampshades this at the end of the first episode, and never gets around to becoming an official member of the League (he just tells them to call him when they need him). This turns out to be very useful in the climax four seasons later.
- In the Five-Episode Pilot of Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, the team is pulled together when the titular chipmunks are on a mission to recover a stolen ruby, but end up foiling a high level robbery. Afterwards, Monty, Zipper, and Gadget intend to leave, but when a new mystery begins, they decide to stick together.
- In the first episode of Dinotrux, all of the various species are extremely resistant to Ty's radical idea that different species can work together until Ty accidentally throws one of them into a tar pit and everyone quickly uses their own individual abilities to save him by building a bridge to reach him and pull him out. The awe at what they just achieved is what motivates them to stay together for the rest of the series.
