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Ragtag Bunch Of Misfits / Live-Action TV

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"The only thing keeping Manhattan safe from crumbling to a pile of dust is the four of you."

Ragtag Bunches of Misfits in Live-Action TV series.

  • The core premise of The 100 is that a bunch of juvenile delinquents have to figure out how to keep humanity alive on post-apocalyptic Earth, because they were the only people deemed expendable enough to send down to a Death World. Even after other, better trained people are sent down later, the delinquents still prove essential due to becoming Action Survivors on the ground.
  • The Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., although theoretically (mostly) highly-skilled agents, in reality start with a resurrected agent who doesn't know he was dead, a Broken Bird former field agent who doesn't want to go back in the field, a hacker seeking to undermine SHIELD from the inside, two non-action scientists, and a young but competent agent who is completely devoid of charisma and who turns out to be a traitor. Among the others who join the merry crew in later seasons include the grandson of the two scientists who came from an alternate future timeline, another agent who's not sure he wants to be an agent, one former mercenary who is the ex-husband of a superspy who also joins the team, a series of identical brothers who insinuate they're really robots...
  • The Midnight Society from Are You Afraid of the Dark? fit this in all their iterations seen in the show.
    • The first iteration we see is comprised by Gary, the responsible leader of the bunch with a fascination for magic; Betty Ann, a nice girl with a penchant for the macabre; Kristen, the girly girl of the group; Kiki, the tomboy; Eric, the sarcastic one who habitually antagonized others; David, the shy guy; and newcomer Frank, a tough-talking punkish guy.
    • Eric leaves the group with no explanation as to why after the first season, and Kristen and David have moved away after the second season. The group then adds Sam as the new girly girl of the group, and Tucker, Gary's bratty younger brother who becomes the youngest member of the Society. Eventually Frank moves away after the fourth season, his place taken by Stig, a weird guy with poor hygiene.
    • The first iteration of the Society eventually disbands as a whole, and a few years later, a teenaged and more mature Tucker forms a new one with himself as the new leader, which includes Quinn, a cocky jock-type kid; Vange, the tomboy; Megan, the newest girly girl; and Andy the friendly guy who aims to please.
    • In the 2019 mini-series, the Society is comprised by Gavin, The Leader of the group who is charming and confident; former loser turned popular girl Louise; Akiko, a tomboy and aspiring filmmaker; chubby Plucky Comic Relief Graham; and Rachel, the newcomer girly girl who finds herself pursued by a supernatural threat that the rest in the Society get caught up in.
    • The Midnight Society in the 2021 mini-series consists of Conner, The Leader, confident and outgoing, and kidnapped by the monstrous Shadowman in the opening scene; Luke, Conner's level-headed best friend who's a big fan of old horror movies in black and white; Jai, the Plucky Comic Relief and all-around geek; Gabby, a very smart girl who is an overachiever in everything except doing well at her job in a local fast food joint; and Hanna, an outspoken Soapbox Sadie. Alongside them is Seth, Hanna's little brother who is obsessed with magic and wishes to join the Midnight Society, which he finally achieves in the fifth episode.
  • The A-Team. So very much. As Face once put it, "On our own, we're just a bunch of misfits, but when we're together...now that's something special." The leader of the outfit is addicted to his own adrenaline. The mechanic and Big Guy is in desperate need of anger management classes and has to be knocked out every time they need to travel by airplane. The con-man is, you might say, very easily distracted by the presence of pretty women. As soon as he breaks the team pilot and in-house medical advisor out of the psychiatric ward, they're on their way. Aren't you glad you just hired The A-Team?
  • Babylon 5 makes this (or as J. Michael Straczynski puts it, being "community-builders") our collective Hat.
    • Mostly averted in the Crusade spin-off, where the only "misfits" are Dureena, a professional thief, and Galen, a rogue technomage.
  • Not unheard of on Bar Rescue. Usually, the owner gets in over their head; the bartenders have serious recipe and pouring issues; the cook puts out consistently undercooked food; the general manager is a hothead; and if there's a gentlemen's club, at least one of the dancers is guaranteed to booze on the clock. The Reveal almost always leads to the Misfit Mobilization Moment.
  • Battlestar Galactica (2003): A commander who's brilliant but can't play politics and as such is about to be quietly retired; an alcoholic, caustic, foul-mouthed tyrant of an XO; a stratospherically gifted but undisciplined and half-crazy pilot; the commander's highly competent and idealistic yet resentful son; a genius scientist who can't keep it in his pants; and a schoolteacher are the people exemplified as the best that is left of all of humanity. And their ship is an aging, battered, about-to-be-decommissioned bucket which (due to being ancient and obsolete) is actually the perfect weapon against masters of electronic warfare.
    • The Fleet itself qualifies. It carries the last survivors of humanity and consists of: cargo ships, one or two science vessels, factory/refinery ships where workers toil endlessly in terrible conditions, a freighter which essentially becomes a slavery and black market hub, passenger liners (airplanes in space) and a massive luxury liner (complete with artificial gardens) that travel together with an old battleship that was supposed to be retiring, its brand-new cousin commanded by General Ripper and, much later, a Cylon Baseship. And the best bit is, there are plenty of episodes showing just how much they can't stand each other and only do because it is the next best option.
    • "A ragtag, fugitive fleet...".
  • Invoked by Sheldon in an episode of The Big Bang Theory.
    Leonard: Why do I always have to carry the heavy stuff?
    Sheldon: Well, it’s very simple. In our ragtag band of scientists with nothing to lose, I’m the smart one, Wolowitz is the funny one, and Koothrappali is the lovable foreigner who struggles to understand our ways and fails. That leaves you, by default, as the muscle.
  • Blake's 7 makes Torchwood look like a haven of unity and competence.
  • Black Sheep Squadron (originally titled Baa Baa Black Sheep) is about the exploits of a squadron of misfit pilots fighting the Japanese in the South Pacific during World War II. One pilot has crashed so many times he's technically a Japanese ace. Others are drunks, insubordinate brawlers, Japanese-American pacifist mystics, or just plain crazy. Their commander is a drunk, insubordinate, over-the-hill ex-Flying Tiger who whips them into shape and turns them into the terrors of the South Pacific. It's based on a true story, and while the misfit tendencies of the squadron members themselves are highly exaggerated, Gregory "Pappy" Boyington, the squadron commander, was if anything MORE of a drunken misfit Magnificent Bastard than the one in the TV series.
    • And, just in case any viewer missed the point, each first-season episode opened with a title card that described the squadron as "a collection of misfits and screwballs who became the terrors of the South Pacific."
  • The Boys are a group of four Badass Normals and one crazy super-powered person, whose goal is to take the Supes of the world to task for their Superdickery (usually covered up by the Vought Corporation). Billy Butcher is a Brit who hates all Supes with a passion after the Homelander raped his wife, who then vanished eight years ago, Hughie Campbell is a rookie with technical expertise, whose girlfriend was turned into chunky salsa when A-Train accidentally ran through her, Frenchie is, well, a Frenchman who knows a little bit of everything, Mother's Milk is calm, methodical, and really doesn't like Frenchie, and the Female is a crazy super-powered Asian girl who can't speak.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Much was made of the Scooby Gang's misfit characteristics, both as individuals and as a group. Particularly during the high school years. Or in Season 4 in comparison to the Initiative.
    • Ditto for Team Angel, minus the high school part.
  • In Cobra Kai, The students of both Johnny Lawrence's Cobra Kai (and later Eagle Fang) as well as Daniel LaRusso's Miyagi-Do are for the most part made up of nerds, 'losers', and outcasts.
  • The central study group characters of Community are a Jerk with a Heart of Gold disbarred lawyer; an ex-anarchist high school dropout; a Meta Guy who sees everything as tropes; a high school jock-turned-goofball nerd; a recovering alcoholic Evangelical Christian housewife; a unpopular girl-turned-hottie who had a mental breakdown; a conniving, somewhat racist old man with Obfuscating Stupidity; and a crazed Chinese ex-professor who lied about knowing his subject. It's hard to find a group this crazy and yet a coherent whole.
  • The Danger 5 team, particularly in the online prequel. In fact, the reason the team exists is because when Tucker, Jackson, and Pierre were sent on a mission to Hitler, their total failure was met with such scorn that two women — the abrasive, alcoholic Russian Isla, and the calm but uptight Claire — were added to the team. Thus, in the midst of a satire of old-fashioned sexism, the Danger 5 team was born.
  • The Defenders (2017) (pictured): The titular group is comprised of a blind defense attorney (Matt Murdock), a smartass private investigator (Jessica Jones), a bulletproof ex-con (Luke Cage), and a kid with a glowing fist (Danny Rand). This unlikely group are to protect New York City against the Hand.
    • Their support network of allies is even more impressive: a social worker and recovered addict (Malcolm Ducasse), a freelance nurse (Claire Temple), two sensei (Stick and Colleen Wing), two more lawyers (Foggy Nelson and Jeri Hogarth), two reporters (Karen Page and Trish Walker), and an NYPD detective (Misty Knight).
    • It says something when the project's working title was Group Therapy.
  • Doctor Who:
    • The show plays this to almost Running Gag levels. The Doctor themself defines ragtag, a Cloudcuckoolander who stole a clapped-out ship and ran away from their people, for the sole purpose of....sightseeing the multiverse. They then make a habit of picking up cavewomen, warriors from the Scottish Highlands, nurses, kissogramers, schoolteachers, constantly put-upon soldiers, reporters, and on one occasion, a 19-year-old working in a department store. Predictably, they save the multiverse repeatedly.
    • In A Good Man Goes to War, the Doctor assembles a team from across time and space to rescue Amy and her baby. Said team consists of the Doctor himself, a 900 year old time traveller; the Doctor's companion Rory Williams, a 2000 year old Roman Centurion; Commander Strax, a Sontaran nurse; Madame Vastra and Jenny Flint, Victorian crime-fighting katana-wielding interspecies lesbians; and Dorium Maldovar, a big fat blue guy. Space Pirates are also involved.
    • Invoked in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship. The Doctor recruits Egyptian Queen Nefertiti, Victorian-Era big-game hunter John Riddell, Amy Pond, Rory Williams the Last Centurion, and (by accident) Rory's very confused dad Brian to help complete his mission.
    • In In The Forest Of The Night, the Gifted and Talented kids seem to be made up mostly of the weird kids that Clara and Danny thought had something special.
  • Doom Patrol (2019) is full of weirdness: a wheelchaired genius and his human-Yeti hybrid daughter, a brain in a metal body, a blob lady, a woman with 64 different personalities, a man covered in bandages because he is possessed by a radioactive being and a cybernetic superhero.
  • Eureka is basically an entire town of misfits, albeit not necessarily ragtag.
  • Farscape is basically this IN SPACE too. Of course, they're pretty awesome anyway, since the misfits are comprised of kick-ass ex-soldiers and convicts.
  • Firefly is essentially the ragtag bunch of misfits IN SPACE!.
  • The East Dillon Lions in Season 4 of Friday Night Lights start out this way. Coach meets his quarterback when a local detective brings him in the back of a squad car even and the rest of the team doesn't know how to huddle.
  • Friends: The main characters consist of a neurotic, 11-towel-categories Control Freak who lives with a spoiled Runaway Bride not even capable of making coffee; their neighbours, a Stepford Snarker raised by a drag-queen father and porn-writing mother, and a charming but brainless Manchild, and a dinosaur nerd who married a lesbian, and Cloud Cuckoo Lander former Street Urchin rounding out the group. Yup, your ordinary, fully-qualified group of adults.
    • And muppets!
  • The Full Monty (2023): After music teacher Hetty is laid off due to budget cuts, she has Destiny gather any other student who doesn't have anything better to do. Hetty ends up as the director of the "Revenge Choir", which specializes in singing songs with profane lyrics. Loudly. On school grounds. As Hetty gloats, she is a volunteer so she cannot be terminated.
  • Game of Thrones:
    • The Night's Watch. Even many of the members who don't have a criminal past are fleeing from a life wherein they were considered unsuitable by their own kin.
    • The Brotherhood Without Banners. They're competent enough to get by and become a pain in the arse for the Lannisters, but at the end of the day they aren't the decisive force fighting against them, and they lack the funding necessary.
    • House Stark, as of Season 6, with their leadership consisting of one of the last Starks (Sansa), a former Lord Commander of the Night's Watch (Jon Snow), a knight from a noble house in the Stormlands (Davos), a Red Priestess (Melisandre), and a Wildling chieftain (Tormund). The bulk of their army consists of two thousand Wildlings and several hundred bannermen from the few Northern houses still loyal to them. Suffice to say, the resurgent forces of House Stark are a diverse bunch. As of the finale, this is taken further with the addition of the surviving Northern Lords, Littlefinger and the Vale Lords as their bannermen.
    • Westerosi exiles and rejects, scorned nobles, fugitives, tarnished knights, mercenaries, eunuch warriors, Dothraki, and former slaves are all part of Daenerys' retinue — and there are her three dragons as well.
    • Stannis' army is composed of this, by Westerosi standards. It includes former smugglers, Lyseni pirates, religious fanatics worshipping a strange new religion, and, of course, a Red Witch.
    • In the final season, the last stand against the armies of the dead is led by a recently-revived bastard (Jon), his little sister a face-stealing assassin (Arya), a teenage reformer with dragons for children (Daenerys), social outcast (Brienne), redeemed former-attempted child murderer (Jaime), an alcoholic dwarf (Tyrion), ex-smuggler (Davos), foreign priestess (Melisandre), and crippled seer (Bran).
    • And in the finale, the new Small Council consists of the aforementioned Tyrion, Davos, and Brienne, along with nervous Maester-in-training Sam and self-serving mercenary Bronn.
  • Glee gets its entire premise from this. A Cool Teacher takes on the worst Glee club in the state consisting of an obnoxious diva, the school's star quarterback, a Camp Gay who also plays football, a pregnant cheerleader, a Jerk Jock, a Sassy Black Woman, a stuttering Asian Perky Goth, a nerd in a wheelchair, and two more cheerleaders and two more football players.
    • Lampshaded in Journey to Regionals, with Olivia Newton John saying that the whole trope is overused and that everyone expects the underdogs to win. Not this time.
  • Good Omens: What's standing against Earth and the end of the world? An outcast angel and demon who are more comfortable with humans than their own kind, a prophetess's quirky descendent, a deluded "witch-finder" who recruited a pretend computer engineer, a spiritual medium/courtesan, and an 11-year-old Reality Warper and his friends.
  • Happy Endings: The main gang is this whenever they all work together on something, which doesn't happen too often (usually they're split into smaller groups of two or three). In Kickball 2: The Kickening, they rally together for a kickball match, and Max describes them as 'The lovable but gruff player manager (himself), a third baseman with priorities all out of whack (Dave, trying to decide which eyeblack to use), a right fielder in six inch heels on (Penny insists her kickball shoes make look like a lesbian), and Brad (who likes to bunt)-who Max can't tell if he's practicing kicking or gently nudging it to see if its still alive. Paired with the "child-sized" woman Alex, and the crazy Scotty. Even though they eventually get the aid of their friend/team traitor Jane, and NFL player Lance Briggs, this trope is ultimately subverted as they lose in the championship.
    • In Season 3, trying to save the kid playcenter where he now works, Brad says he's gonna round up the rag-taggiest band of misfits. His boss excitedly asks "Traveling Wilburys?!" and Brad says "How am I gonna get the Traveling Wilburys? Two of them are dead! Its my friends, dammit! I'm talking about my friend!"
  • Heroes uses this. At the end of Season 1 a group containing a cheerleader, a male nurse, a cop, an Internet stripper, a boy genius, a politician, a Japanese Otaku, his sidekick, an escaped con and the professor are all present
  • Hogan's Heroes are a ragtag bunch of multinational soldiers who are probably one of the most powerful Allied sabotage and espionage forces in all of Germany. Even the oblivious and childish Carter is a Genius Ditz when it comes to explosives.
  • The Inbetweeners are a group of four lads consisting of a posh nerd with No Social Skills and a tendency to either snark at everything or put his foot in it, a hopeless romantic with such a single-minded crush on one girl that he utterly fails to pick up on when other women are into him, a Know-Nothing Know-It-All with a penchant for Blatant Lies, with particular attention paid to exaggerating his experience with women, and an idiot with poor personal hygiene.
  • Kamen Rider Build: The nascita gang is led by a genius with identity issues and includes an idiot hero with a mean punch, a girl with an idol persona and a journalist. They fight to stop the evil organization operating in their country, turning people into monsters and generally creating chaos. And that's before they are joined by said idol's fanboy and a former cartoonish villain (both enemy soldiers) and have to defeat an Eldritch Abomination trying to eat the planet.
  • Lazy Company is comprised of a spectacularly unlucky sergeant, a Lovable Sex Maniac corporal, a Blind Without 'Em ingénue and an escapee from an asylum who is probably the Only Sane Man of the bunch. They're fighting Nazis in 1944 France and are surprisingly good at it.
  • Legends of Tomorrow features a bunch of Z-list superheroes traveling through time to fix history.
    • The Season 1 regular cast includes: a girl with wings and a past lives complex, a deceased (and resurrected) assassin, a pair of criminals, a billionaire with more tech than he clearly knows what to do with, a physicist and mechanic who can combine into one person, and the time traveler who recruited them all.
    • Later seasons add: a historian who was injected with a Nazi super-serum, an African woman whose totem gives her animal powers, a fugitive hacker from the 2040s, a speedster, a shapeshifter stuck in the aforementioned African woman's form... the list goes on.
  • Leverage starts out like this, especially before the gang warms up to each other. While these people are all the best at what they do, they all are adamant about always working alone, and they don't like one another at first: lead by an alcoholic Team Dad who used to be a good guy, a nerdy hacker, a temperamental hitter, an elegant (but deluded) grifter, and Parker, who has a reputation for being literally insane.
  • The Librarians (2014) follows the adventures of three Librarians-in-training and their guardian, all of whom were recruited in the first episode and generally have no idea what they're doing. Colonel Baird is a pretty capable Guardian, but the other three are only there because they were the last Librarian candidates that the Serpent Brotherhood hadn't killed, since they didn't see Stone, Cassandra, or Ezekiel as much of a threat. Regardless, things tend to work out pretty well for the team anyways.
    Lamia: How are you going to stop us? Hmm? With your little knock-off Librarians? One doomed by her gift, one who fled his gift, one who abuses it!
  • Lost's cast includes a spinal surgeon, a fugitive, a con man, a One-Hit Wonder rock star, a former member of the Republican Guard, a cursed millionaire, a Deadpan Snarker psychic who can hear a dead person's last thoughts, a memory-impaired physicist, and an Unstuck in Time Scottish man. As seasons passed, you could add an immortal, a Deadpan Snarker pilot, a Magnificent Bastard, a Handicapped Badass who has always been an Unwitting Pawn, a puff of smoke transformed into the previous Unwitting Pawn and another immortal who had the job to keep this puff of smoke on the island and who might be a God.
  • When just looking at each of the Marvel Netflix shows on their own, the main cast is usually a bunch of misfits:
    • Daredevil (2015): A blind lawyer who knows martial arts (Matt Murdock), an intrepid secretary/reporter with a habit of seeking danger to get leads (Karen Page), and a third lawyer who just wants to keep his head on straight (Foggy Nelson) are responsible for taking down Wilson Fisk.
    • Jessica Jones (2015) is the tale of three addicts: the alcoholic private investigator (Jessica Jones), the former child star with an old drug habit (Trish Walker), and the recovered addict (Malcolm Ducasse).
  • In one episode of The IT Crowd Moss uses the trope almost word for word when he, Roy, and a trio of Douglas' perverted business colleges are playing a Dungeons & Dragons style RPG. "I've only come to see what kind of ragtag bunch of adventures have managed to best the deadliest criminals in Crackenwood".
  • As the title of the show may suggest, this is pretty much the whole premise of 2009 sci-fi drama Misfits, which chronicles the escapades of five slightly disturbed and anti-social young offenders doing community service, who develop superpowers after being caught in a freak electrical storm.
  • During the Neverland arc of Once Upon a Time, Emma rallies Regina, Snow, Charming, and Hook into an impromptu Five-Man Band so they can go rescue Henry. This means the rescue team is composed of The Chosen One, a manipulative Evil Sorceress, an idealisitic princess, a Knight in Shining Armor, and an unscrupulous pirate. Emma even invokes this, saying that it doesn't matter if not all of them like each other — their different histories and professions give the whole group access to many different skills, all of which will be needed to survive in a place where everything is trying to kill them.
  • Power Rangers dips into this quite often; even when the team as a whole are trained professionals their leader is often a rookie. Still, some teams are more ragtag than others:
  • Primeval. Lester is well aware that he's in charge of a Ragtag Bunch Of Misfits and would gladly fire the lot of them and bring in professionals instead, were he not such a fundamentally decent chap.
    James Lester: Repeat that disgraceful slander, and you'll be hearing from my laywers.
  • Each season of Prison Break has a new band of criminals. Michael lampshaded it in season four:
    Let me guess. He had a ragtag band of criminals ready to pick up the slack.
  • Red Dwarf: The main cast consists of a self professed Lazy Bum, a hologram of his overzealous dead bunk mate, a senile computer, a creature who evolved from the ship's cat, and an android with an overactive guilt chip, all of whom are trying to survive deep space whilst trying to avoid hostile threats.
  • The outlaws from Robin Hood included a disinherited nobleman, his manservant, a con-artist/pick-pocket/thief, a carpenter, a woodsman, and an Arabic female doctor. The third season added a monk and a potter, who were admittedly, pretty useless.
  • The Five in Sanctuary were this, including an immortal scientist specializing in strange creatures, a genius keeping himself alive with a machine, an invisible thief, an electrical vampire/Insufferable Genius, and teleporting Jack the Ripper. The Sanctuary team itself could be considered this with the above-mentioned immortal scientist, her daughter (and Jack the Ripper's) with anger-management issues, a quirky forensic psychiatrist disliked by his own colleagues, a Neanderthal, and a HAP. After the death of Helen's daughter, the team "acquires" a professional thief and smuggler.
  • Stargate-verse:
    • Stargate SG-1: Fitting the Bunny-Ears Lawyer mold. Teal'c is an alien defector, Jack is the Military Maverick, and Daniel is the quirky academic. Even Sam is presented as not seeming to relate to a lot of people outside the band and rather obsessive when it comes to Gate technology and physics. She's in two male-dominated fields, the military and science, and seems to have a psychological need to prove herself because of it ("Me? Tense? I'm not tense!"). Of the later additions, Jonas Quinn was responsible for his predecessor's death, Vala MalDoran is a criminal, and Cam Mitchell gets a lot of flack for being a newbie 'commander' who can't actually give any of his team orders. Probably not quite the sanest group you could send through a Stargate, but they do save the world every other week, so they keep their jobs.
    • Stargate Atlantis isn't much better. John is the only official soldier in the team, who was kicked to the curb by the by his commanders for not obeying the rules, never had anyone until Elizabeth dragged him out of his slump to join the expedition his self-loathing issues still intact but he's still the best pilot in 2 galaxies, Elizabeth herself is Married to the Job and isolated with the responsibility of keeping an alien city running and everyone under control, Rodney is an abrasive, arrogant scientist with a penchant for last-minute solutions, Ronon is The Stoic who spent 7 years alone on the run from aliens which left serious emotional damage but also real muscle, Teyla is a down-to-earth action-girl who's the closest they have to someone normal but was still orphaned from a young age and lived under the Wraith her whole life.
    • Stargate Universe takes this trope and turns it up to eleven. Introducing
      • Insufferable Genius Manipulative Bastard widower Dr. Rush who is more fit to be a supervillain than a hero
      • A commander who isn't really fit to command anyone, has problems making hard decisions and was about to retire
      • Brilliant, but Lazy Eli who has a mother infected with HIV, an absent father, a former love interest turning into something alien and hostile and a dead girlfriend.
      • Said former love interest Chloe who is utterly useless and knows it (and is turning into something different). Oh, and her father died in the first episode.
      • Lt. Scott, newbie but became second in command, has a son at home whom he doesn't know and his current girlfriend is the aforementioned Chloe.
      • Greer, who had an abusive war veteran father and has anger management issues.
      • And this was only the main cast...
  • Star Trek:
    • One could certainly expect the crew of the Federation Starship Voyager to be this after half the crew gets killed and replaced by necessity with the outlaws they were sent to capture. But the Maquis quickly blend in and in the later seasons, you couldn't tell any difference between them and the Starfleet crew. B'Elanna Torres and Tom Paris still manage to appear somewhat out of the norm. Torres has a temper that could power the ships engines, and Tom Paris is an ex-con. Given that he actually runs cons during the shows run, the 'ex' part is exaggerated (in fact, he was originally put on Voyager as part of his sentence, so technically the 'ex' part doesn't apply at all).
    • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
      • The Rotarran in "Soldiers of the Empire". A Klingon Bird of Prey that is down on its luck, plagued by a series of defeats is led by Martok, Worf, and Dax to a victory.
      • As for the main cast, most of them were Reassigned to Antarctica in one form or another. Sisko was hoping to phone it in until retirement, Kira was shoved there because she was no fan of the provisional government, Odo and Quark frankly had nowhere else to go (and Quark was blackmailed into staying put), Garak was exiled, and Bashir talked a good game about "frontier medicine", but he had a lot to hide and a backwater station was a good place to hide it. Only O'Brien and Dax appear to have volunteered for it.
      • Garak once refers to the Bajoran Resistance as a "ragtag band of terrorists". Kira, who fought in the Resistance, doesn't seem too offended, especially since they won their fight against Cardassia.
      • Utterly defied in the episode "Valiant". Red Squad, an elite training team for the Federation, ended up with a cadet in charge of their ship after a skirmish killed their real captain. The now "Captain" Watters does a decent job of staying alive behind enemy lines, and manages to complete their original mission to recon info on a new Dominion battleship. Then he tries to enforce this trope by disobeying orders and taking their damaged cruiser to fight a brand-new battleship ten times their size. For what it's worth, their Technobabble attack makes a good light show... and nothing else. Red Squad is mercilessly slaughtered, leaving only the two main characters and one Red Squad cadet alive.
      • In "The Magnificent Ferengi", when Quark needs to rescue his mother from the Dominion, he assembles a team of Ferengi to prove that Ferengi can be just as tough as any Proud Warrior Race Guy species. When Brunt arrives, he describes Quark's recruits as "a child, a moron, a failure, and a psychopath".
    • In Star Trek: Picard, (retired) Admiral Picard puts together a small crew for an off-book mission. This crew consists of himself, his drug-addicted former XO, a gruff former XO of a ship that (officially) no longer exists, an overly-anxious cyberneticist who was manipulated to be The Mole, a naïve boy raised by warrior nuns, and a former Borg drone. He even describes them as "decidedly motley."
  • Supernatural: The entire subculture of hunters. They're all just a bunch of emotionally scarred people who make it their (non-paying) job to hunt and kill supernatural beings, most likely because someone they were close to was killed by one. Considering how rampant these paranormal attacks seem to be, you'd think the government would set up a secret agency to fight them. But no, it's left entirely up to these people, who will break as many laws and wander the earth as much as they have to in order to get the job done, with no thanks or pay to show for it?
    • From The Song Remains The Same, with Heaven and Hell both threatening to destroy the earth and the apocalypse underway:
      Dean: This is it.
      Sam: This is what?
      Dean: Team Free Will. One ex-blood junkie, one dropout with six bucks to his name, and Mr. Comatose over there.
  • Super Sentai does this on an almost yearly basis when it comes to forming a team. Some of the more stand out examples include:
    • In Choudenshi Bioman, the team itself is descended from five people whom received Bio Particles and have inherited these particles, using them to fight off the Neo Empire Gear. They are made up of: a pilot descended from a samurai, a race car driver descended from a hunter, an adventurous water sportsman descended from a fisherman, a photographer descended from a kunoichi who is later replaced by an world famous Olympic archer, and a flutist descended from a noblewoman.
    • Choujin Sentai Jetman: Thanks to a mishap in firing the Applied Phlebotinum for the Jetman powers, you get a soldier who just lost his fiancee having to make do with a cynical womanising hedonist, a Farm Boy, an Ordinary High-School Student (initially) Only in It for the Money and a Spoiled Brat (who eventually got better) heiress.
    • Samurai Sentai Shinkenger: The group followed in this series is actually the 18th iteration of this team, with the mantle of each Shinkenger(except for the Sixth Ranger) being passed down from generation to generation. This incarnation of the team ends up being made up of a badass stoic lord who's revealed to be a kagemusha for the real Shinken Red, a Large Ham kabuki actor who's Yes-Man tendencies initially ran very deep, a elementary school teacher with major Parental Abandonment issues and really cannot cook, a rebellious slacker whose cleverness makes up for his lack of training, an adorable Country Mouse who's Heroic Self-Deprecation runs a mile wide due to replacing her older sister, and a sushi chef who's the Bunny-Ears Lawyer childhood friend of said lord.
    • Take a Hot-Blooded Jerk with a Heart of Gold and add a Defector from Decadence Master Swordsman, then bring along a Tsundere Aloof Dark-Haired Girl, a Combat Pragmatist Gadgeteer Genius, The Pollyanna and add a Determinator Ascended Fanboy of Super Sentai and what do you get? The Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger.
    • Mashin Sentai Kiramager: After the planet Crystalia gets taken over by the Yodon Empire, the five Kiramai Stones are taken to Earth by Princess Mabushina and must choose people with strong Kiramental as their users. The group ending up being formed is: a highschool amateur artist, a esports gamer, a track and field star, an actor very dedicated to his craft, a doctor who is very good at hiding her more zealous traits, and a half human treasure hunter with Super-Strength.
    • What happens when you pair a good-hearted guy with no experience with an old robot, a robot with Fantastic Racism, a robot Shrinking Violet, a robot cleaning man hungry for knowledge who can't hold back his churlishness, add a pirate brother whose morals are on a scale between gray and Robin Hood, an engineer pirate, a pair of super-deformed twins that look like mechas and an 11th-Hour Ranger who was a villain because of father issues? The answer is: Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger.
    • The Avataro Sentai Donbrothers are the group known for having perhaps the biggest Dysfunction Junction in the history of the franchise yet. Said group being made up of a too talented and too honest for his own good delivery man that came from a peach-shaped capsule that arrived from seemingly out of no where, a haiku-obsessed life drifter, a high school manga artist who is dealing with being accused of plagiarism, a salaryman who can get downright murderous when it comes to anything regarding his wife, a theatre-kid turned falsely accused criminal, and a wannabe superhero who also came from an out of nowhere capsule with an extremely violent split personality.
    • The Ohsama Sentai King-Ohger are a group made up of rulers that run entire kingdoms, being comprised of an orphaned wannabe tyrant king turned actual king who is the long lost brother of the actual Evil Overlord who rules his kingdom, a temperamental delinquent-looking tech genius, an incredibly self-centered doctor who takes pride in her selfishness and encourages others to do the same, an borderline emotionless and stern judge who can only properly communicate their true feelings through a mascot plushie, and an incredibly theatrical liar who is absolutely shameless about using people for his own ends. Then there's the very long-lived "old-fashioned storyteller" who's using both the Ohsama Sentai and Bognaarok to rule as the "King of All".
  • Casaya from Survivor: Panama was one of the most dysfunctional tribes the show has ever seen, with the yoga instructor who tried to start fire with his mind alone and the couch potato who was scared of leaves on her first day being the sanest members of the bunch. The other members? A Manchild with a Hair-Trigger Temper and Sanity Slippage made ten thousand times worse by severe nicotine withdrawal, a fire dancer who annoyed everyone on her tribe with her Talkative Loon and Cloudcuckoolander ways, an easily irritated woman with the world's heaviest Boston accent, who was just a cut below said fire dancer on the Most Annoying scale, a lawyer who spent an entire night drinking wine in the camp's new outhouse, and a ridiculously Asian guy who made his own Zen garden and practiced martial arts on the beach. In spite of all this and their alliance almost coming apart at the seams multiple times, the Casaya Crazy were still able to stick together to pick off the more harmonious and peaceful La Mina tribe and turned on each other only when the Last of His Kind continued his immunity run.
  • Teen Wolf. Every member of Derek's pack was a confirmed misfit before being turned into a werewolf. Scott and Stiles both consider themselves to be misfits as well.
  • The first Season of Titans (2018) deals with the assembly of 4 total strangers who couldn't be more different from each other to fight Trigon, a Satanic Archetype: A bird-themed Badass Normal, an amnesiac alien princess who has no idea she is an alien, a human-demon hybrid with magical powers and a shapeshifter.
    • The show reveals the existence of a previous Titans team: the OG Titans, which was formed by same bird-themed Badass Normal, two half of a bird-themed couple, former Wonder-woman protegee and an Atlantean.
    • In Season 2, Superman and Lex Luther's clone, another bird-themed Badass Normal sidekick and Deathstroke's metahuman daughter joins the roster.
  • Torchwood details the exploits of a band of misfits who seem to have nothing in common save the fact they are all inexplicably bisexual (or Welsh) and somehow lonely. In fact, almost as many episodes (including the apocalyptic season finales) deal with the team members fighting each other as with the supposed premise of protecting Earth (or, at least, Cardiff) from aliens. But they ultimately are quite protective of each other and complement one another.
  • Warehouse 13:
    • The Warehouse 13 team could certainly apply: two former Secret Service agents (one of whom gets psychic hunches), a disgraced former NSA analyst who was convicted of treason, an aura-reading B&B operator, a former mental patient and Teen Genius, an Anti-Villain female HG Wells, and a gay ATF agent who's a living lie detector. Not to mention their boss, who is a mysterious teleporting and apparently immortal woman.
    • The Regents are this. None of them have high positions, and most have menial jobs (one is a diner waitress and another is a housewife who is also Pete's mom). This is deliberate, though, as people in power can't be trusted with the Artifacts in the Warehouse.
  • The Major Crimes Unit in The Wire plays this trope straight.
  • Parodied and called out by name in Wizards of Waverly Place when Justin has to teach a class of magical delinquents to be a wand drill team of sorts. Everyone is too Genre Blind to see that there's actually very little irony in the ragtag much of misfits pulling it off (well pull it off until Alex's attempt to help the one truly hopeless member causes them to actually lose out in the end).

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