Examples of Reassigned to Antarctica in Comic Books.
- Astro City: All the soldiers of the Zirr Empire who were defeated by the First Family are cashiered, demoted and reassigned to crap work. Since they're brainwashed, they accept this as failure for not doing their all to serve their empire.Zir: This was our system. This was our way. We do as the priestlords say. And the priestlords lie to us. And good people break and are punished for failing, rather than blame those who created the situation in the first place.
- Bigfoot & Gray on the Run: According to what they're first seen talking about in their introduction, Daye and Knight are on their mission to capture Bigfoot and Gray because of an assignment they were given at the FBO's headquarters as punishment for doing an unexplained discrepancy referred to as "the incident" before. By the time they find the titular duo, Knight remarks to Daye that catching them will allow the agents to rebuild their reputation at the headquarters.Knight: You nitwit! This mission isn't a perk, it's more like a punishment!Daye: Do you think it had anything to do with the incident?Knight: (gives Daye a Dope Slap) How many times have I told you not to mention the incident? Of course it's because of the incident! Why do you think that we're on this wild goose chase?
- In G.I. Joe, assignment to Toxo-Viper duty in Cobra is a punishment for major offenses. Since Toxo-Vipers work with hazardous materials and the suits aren't entirely airtight as a cost-saving measure (earning them the nickname "Leaky Suit Brigade"), anyone who receives the punishment quickly learns the error of their ways.
- Slackers and minor troublemakers are sent to the desert as Desert Scorpions, with the promise of reinstatement to their original Viper corps if they survive (operative word: survive) a year without causing any issues. Desert Scorpions fight hard because they know they're just one screw-up away from Toxo-Viper duty.
- In Marvel's G.I. Joe comics, washouts from the Joe training program would be transferred to Thule, Greenland or Fez, Morocco. Whether this was to stop them talking about details of the training or to dissuade those who were unsuitable from applying in the first place isn't clear. Although given just how epically it sucks to be assigned to Thule, it was likely the latter. Even so, one trainee fell to his knees and begged for Thule rather than watch the 6 hour driving safety video a third time.
- A few incompetent supervillains who reformed joined the Justice League of America. They were sent to the South Pole as "Justice League Antarctica". The League's leadership decided it would keep them out of the way, as no trouble would happen down there. They were wrong, with hilarious results.
- In Whiteout, Marshall Carrie Stetko was literally Reassigned to Antarctica after killing a prisoner who assaulted and attempted to rape her.
- In Adventures In The Rifle Brigade, Gestapo captain Venkschaft is sent to the Russian front with the rank of Cocksucker Third Class after throwing a fit and calling Hitler a "one-balled twat" over the phone.
- In Daredevil, the doctor who authorized the release of the Daredevil impostor hired by the Kingpin from the insane asylum is forced to work in Florida. As a gardener.
- Asterix:
- In Asterix in Corsica it's established that the vast majority of the Romans stationed in the titular island were transferred there as a means of punishment. The only people there who don't fall into this category are the naive, over-eager and aptly named Legionary Courtingdisastus (who volunteered to go to Corsica due to "good chances of promotion", an action which makes the men he's later given command of think he's completely insane), a Corsican that hit his head and joined the Roman Army and (probably), the governor's crack troops.
- In the very same book it's revealed by the sitting governor that should he fall out of Julius Caesar's glory, the emperor intends to reassign him to one of the Roman camps occupying a certain little village by Armorica's coast.
- A Legionary to other: "They give me a choice between being reassigned here and death penalty, but you know the army: you choose a thing and they give you the other".
- The very first book (Asterix the Gaul) ends with Caesar learning that the centurion of Compendium had plotted to overthrow him after getting the Gauls' magical potion. He then decides to send him and his men to "Outer Mongolia, I hear there's a barbarian rebellion there".
- In Asterix and the Chieftain's Shield, after the heroes beat Caesar to the titular shield, the latter decides to cover up his defeat by sending the troops looking for it to a garrison in Numidia and promotes an uninvolved Centurion and Legionary who just happened to drunkenly stumble by to Tribune and Centurion respectively.
- In the film Asterix vs Caesar, Courtingdisastus appears again, none the wiser, as a recently transferred in junior officer who sends out a patrol, in which he captures Chief Vitalstatistix's niece Panacea and her fiancé. Said officer thinks that this action will help force the Gauls into capitulation. The commander thinks that it will just provoke them into leveling the camp. He promptly transfers the young officer to a distant outpost in the Sahara, shortly before the Gauls arrive.
- In of Avengers: The Initiative, Villain with Good Publicity Norman Osborn reassigns superhero Gravity to the worst possible place in the America superhero initiative...his home state of Wisconsin, where he will take command of the joke team the Great Lakes Avengers.
- The fact that Squirrel Girl is on that team makes this a Reassignment Backfire just waiting to happen.
- In a similar vein, Hellcat joined the Initiative as well, and ended up being assigned to Alaska... only to find she was the only hero for the state. But not for punishment, just pragmatism (in Iron Man's words: "we can't spare anyone else at the moment, there's no indication of a pressing problem [and Alaska] still need[s] representation")... although Marvel Divas later has the possible theory that Tony "sexiled" Patsy after a soured secret relationship.
- Death Squad from Battle is about a five-man German "punishment squad" on the Eastern front, including a dyed-in-the-wool Nazi who was drummed out of the SS for insulting a superior officer, a fesh-faced kleptomaniac looter, and a con artist always looking to make a deal.
- The title character of Fell finds himself reassigned to the hellhole of Snowtown as a result of, well, something we don't know yet. It's implied that this is actually due to calling in a favor, which suggests that whatever it was he did it should've put him off the force altogether.
- Happened to several characters in Judge Dredd in the aftermath of the anti-mutant laws being repealed:
- Chief Judge Hershey came under intense public criticism, and was forced to call an election. Dan Francisco was elected new Chief Judge, and reassigned Hershey to an off-world position.
- Faced with tensions between norms and mutants, Francisco, influenced by Deputy Chief Judge Martin Sinfield, set up four ghettos in the Cursed Earth to provide food for Mega-City One. Dredd himself was assigned to oversee these in order to keep him from causing any more trouble.
- Sinfield sent Judge Rico to aid Dredd after refusing to approve his (Sinfield's) clone's application to become a Judge.
- Everyone sent to The Pit during McGruder's second reign as Chief Judge. Dredd ends up as Sector Chief temporarily in order to change this.
- Can happen to judges who fail fitness tests, which is an assessment by a senior judge upon returning to duty after an injury. Failing can result in the judge being demoted to traffic, admin or worse.
- The one shot Spin-Off Wynter has a literal example, with Judge Wynter being assigned to patrol the Antarctic Wastes as punishment due to him being a Cowboy Cop.
- The original trio of ABC Warriors were all assigned to the elite combat unit as a punishment; Happy Shrapnel had finally worn out all the good will he earned as one of the Wolgan War's oldest soldiers by repeatedly looting and brawling, Hammerstein is said to have murdered a human superior, and the details of Joe Pineapples' situation are classified.
- In The Desert Peach, the regiment Pfirsig Rommel commands consists of the people Nazi Germany cannot just remove from duty (or, in some cases, toss in prison or a concentration camp) for whatever reason, but who are too politically embarrassing, too woefully incompetent, or in some cases, too bugfuck crazy to actually get them involved in the actual war.
- The Black Panther's State Department ally is reassigned to the arctic, probably because he befriended the man when the USA didn't like him or his country. Being a friend of Wakanda just means you get picked up in a ship when you get in trouble. Hurray!
- Knights of the Dinner Table: When Hard 8 reinstates Nitro's GM credentials, it is with the provisio that he is only allowed to GM the Pee Wee Hackleague.
- PBI agent Flagstarr, from Paperinik New Adventures, uses this as a threat for failure. She doesn't go through with it... for that specific failure. A mook who screwed up way more discovered it the hard way.And leave your Bermuda shorts at home. You won't need them in Alaska.
- In the Star Wars Expanded Universe, Imperial ace pilot Soontir Fel is punitively transferred to the 181st Imperial Fighter Wing, nicknamed the "One-Eighty Worst". However he promptly gets to work whipping the unit into shape, and by the time he's through, it's turned into one of the best Imperial squadrons in the galaxy.
- In the Supergirl story arc Red Daughter of Krypton, Guy Gardner makes very clear during an argument with Hal Jordan that he considers being stationed at Ysmault leading a group of Red Lanterns to be this.Guy: After everything, after you made me give up my whole life to come to this rock?
- Blake and Mortimer. A literal version in "The Sarcophagi of the Sixth Continent". Blake has an Oh, Crap! moment when he strays into a Soviet base in Antarctica, and is identified by a Soviet officer he defeated in a previous adventure, who was sent to the South Pole for that cock-up.
- During Atomic Robo and the Shadow from Beyond Time, Louis and Martin build the Quantum Decomputer, which ends up summoning an Eldritch Abomination. The next time we see the two, in Atomic Robo and the Ghost of Station X, they're stationed in Svalbard
.Martin: I mean, honestly. Two years standing in a perpetual blizzard? It was one little mistake!
Louis: We did nearly destroy the universe.
Martin: Technically. But, y'know, we didn't. - Implied in the opening of Copperhead: planet Jasper is a backwater, Copperhead itself is on the edge of that planet's civilization, and Clara's been assigned there due to "not having a lot of options".
- Iron Man: When the FBI still wants to charge Tony Stark with resisting arrest, FBI agent Neil Stretch and Nick Fury argue about it again. Neil Stretch is transferred to the Alaska field office as a result.
- The Ultimates: After the wifebeating incident Jan wanted to resign from the Ultimates and move to a SHIELD research post in Dusseldorf. Fortunately, it was just a project and nothing came out of it.
- In one of the books of the Hilo series, the commander of the Army base threatens some of his guys with this if they don’t find Hilo, who to them is a mysterious kid flying around like a meteor and fighting giant robots with his laser-shooting hands.
- Stillwell threatens two of his subordinates with this in one issue of The Boys, threatening to ship them off to Tasmania for slacking off. Subverted slightly as he then admits they don't have an office there, implying he'd either have them killed or just abandon them in another country with no way to get home.
- Vader's Quest: After drunkenly crashing an X-Wing and being unable to work with Luke Skywalker due to being a Green-Eyed Monster, Rebel Alliance ace Jal Te Gniev is reassigned to be a recruiter on an unimportant planet. He makes no effort to carry out his duties and just drinks and insults the Rebellion until his big mouth endangers Luke, and he then has a shot at redemption.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW): In the Scrapnik Island miniseries, due to the fact that Mecha Knuckles' evil coding was unchangeable, the most E-117 Sigma could do was assign him to guard the Scrambled Egg Carrier, which nobody goes into unless absolutely necessary, just so that he doesn't cause any harm to anyone else on Scrapnik Island.
- U.S.Avengers: Among the inhabitants of Kral, a dumping ground for Skrulls who are too obsessed with Earth culture, are two leftover Power Skrulls from Secret Invasion. This becomes bad news for the locals, as when one Loony Fan stages a takeover it means he's got two superpowered goons at his disposal.
