Basic Trope: One soldier is sent in where an entire army would be used normally.
- Straight: Evil Overlord Darquetoth sends an army to attack Troperland, and Troperland sends a single soldier named Clay.
- Exaggerated: Satan sends every single demon in all of Hell on the world. Clay leaves no survivor, including Satan himself and The Antichrist.
- Downplayed: Clay is a trained soldier, and he's sent to deal with a small group of street thugs.
- Justified:
- Clay is also the most powerful being in the universe.
- The army that Clay was sent to fight consisted of mostly weak/untrained soldiers.
- Sending a large number of soldiers would draw unwanted attention.
- Clay's a scout, and he's sent to investigate how much military force is needed. The townspeople may want the army to come here in all its glory, but what if another town needs their help as well?
- Inverted: An entire battalion is sent to deal with the One-Man Army named Bob that Evil Overlord Darquetoth hired.
- Subverted:
- Clay, who's sent to fight Evil Overlord Darquetoth's entire army, turns out to not be enough to stop him.
- Clay, who's sent to fight Evil Overlord Darquetoth's army does fine against the common Mook, but needs help dealing with Darquetoth's higher-ranking soldiers.
- Clay is for training the local militia up to standards. While he is a badass and a good leader he doesn't do it on his own.
- Double Subverted:
- ... but Clay just needed to take a break, due to how much he's been working.
- ... but Clay gets an 11th-Hour Superpower that puts him on par with Darquetoth's higher-ranking soldiers.
- Parodied: The ruler of Troperland sends Clay to completely destroy Evil Overlord Darquetoth's army and overthrow him. Clay is killed without him ever firing a single shot.
- Zig Zagged: Clay is sent to deal with Evil Overlord Darquetoth's army, but when one of Darquetoth's Elite Mook shows up Clay needs help from The Cavalry to defeat them. Until he gets better equipment/a superpower that lets him take on the Elite Mook by himself... and then the next type of Elite Mook shows up, repeating the cycle until it gets to Darquetoth himself.
- Averted: The ruler of Troperland just sends their entire army right away.
- Enforced: "We want to give the audience a character they can root for, rather than having an entire group for them to try to sympathize with."
- Lampshaded: "Sir, an entire army is going to attack us very soon! What will we do?" "Get a hat and draw the name of one of our soldiers."
- Invoked: "If an entire army can't win against another army, how about we just send one guy?"
- Exploited:
- One of Troperland's generals send one guy in hopes the enemy forces consider them more of a threat based off of the one soldier Clay being sent alone.
- Evil Overlord Darquetoth expects there to only be a single soldier sent, and sets up a trap that one person alone could never escape from.
- Defied: Either Clay the soldier or the ruler of Troperland says "I don't care how good I am/this guy is, I am/he is not going in alone."
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome as one man, no matter how capable, cannot be in multiple places at once and is unable to stop the evil army.
- Sending in the one badass is actually a thinly-disguised Uriah Gambit - the ruler expects him to get killed so he can have a proper army do the job.
- Reconstructed:
- But putting that one man in a vital position or choke point is an invaluable military stratagem as it frees up a lot of resources for defense elsewhere.
- Clay still manages it. Let's hope he doesn't find out about the Uriah Gambit, or else Troperland would be in serious trouble...
- Played for Laughs: Clay, a young, scrawny soldier, is sent out to deal with Evil Overlord Darquetoth's entire army. The entire army either runs away in terror or even end up killing more of their own troops than any other army has to date.
- Played for Drama: Bob the One-Man Army is completely destroying Troperland's entire military, with everyone terrified of what they should do about the Implacable Man they have to deal with.
Back to One Riot, One Ranger.
