History Main / CavalryBetrayal

* Almost occurs in ''Jarhead'' when the Marines call in A-10 ground attack aircraft to provide support during a battle, only for the A-10's to mistake them for the enemy and nearly kill them all with the bombing run.

* In ''[[Sin City]], when the Federal Agents arrive at the farm, Lucille naturally assumes that they are there to help and yells at them to not arrest Marv, as he's with her. And then they pour literally boxes of bullets into poor Lucille.

** Played straight by the Horde in The Broken Front quest. The Alliance are attacking a Scourge encampment, and the Horde join in...only to ''completely ignore'' the Scourge and try to kill Alliance troops. Needless to say, the Scourge comes out victorious.

[[folder:Western Animation]]

* Probably the MostTriumphantExample in Pro Wrestling is WCW Bash at the Beach '96, which, in turn precipitated the biggest FaceHeelTurn in pro wrestling history. After Sting, Randy Savage, and Lex Luger had taken a beating from the outsiders, Hulk Hogan comes down to the ring, ostensibly to help out Sting and Savage (with Luger having been knocked out)...and then he leg dropped Randy Savage, revealing himself to be the Outsiders' mystery partner and heralding the beginning of the New World Order.

* Used in a Cliff Hanger in the 2002 ''HeMan And The Masters Of The Universe'' cartoon: Adam, deprived of his sword and stuck facing down a group of villains led by Skeletor, thinks he sees the Masters on the horizon. They turn out to be Skeletor's minions using the Masters' vehicles.

* The famous [[WhamEpisode Wham Level]] of ''ModernWarfare 2]] ends with one of the most brutal cavalry betrayls in fiction: [[spoiler:The team holds a cabin against an endless stream of attackers while a huge amount of data is copied on a portable hard drive and most of them are dead when all of the data is secured. The last men make a frantic dash down a hillside without any real cover while under fire from lots of automatic rifles, machine guns, and rocket launchers and just 14 meters from the extraction point the player gets downed. When you regain consciousness a few seconds later, your last teammate Ghost drags you by your jacket and finally helicopters of Shadow Company appear from behind you and mow everything down with their miniguns. And when you finaly stumble the last staps to the evac chopper, General Shepherd takes the hard drive and shots both you and Ghost in the chest. The last thing you see is your bodies being thrown in a ditch, a soldiers emptying a cannister of gas over you, and Shepherd throwing his burning cigar at your face.]] You really didn't see THAT comming.

* [[spoiler: Shadow Company and Gen. Shepherd]] in ''Call of Duty: {{Modern Warfare}} 2.''

** Make that pretty much all accounts - for instance, Marshal Ney writing to Fouché written 8 days after the battle mentions that it was Napoleon's ADC La Bedoyère who brought the false news troops approaching the French right flank (i. e. the Prussian I Corps led by General Zieten) were Grouchy's. Napoleon gambled that this lie would motivate his troops enough to make the final attack on Wellington's centre a success and achieve a breakthrough while the troops on his right held off Zieten's. But the attack was repulsed, and it was the French centre that now collapsed. However, Zieten's troops did drive into the French right, in the process also attacking the Nassau troops Wellington's left flank (Papelotte and Fichermont) because they mistook them for French as they wore French-style uniforms. (Also, at that point Bülow's IV Corps had already been in action for hours, fighting for the village of Plancenoit behind the French centre and right).

* In an inversion of the above, Hitler also played this role in the areas of Europe the Soviets occupied prior to 1941. Indeed, many guerrilla organization (such as the Forest Brothers and the UPA) saw him as a potential savior, only to find themselves surrounded by Fieldgrau and Panzers gunning for them (though Hitler did allow some anti-Soviet fighters to join his puppet organizations).

* ''The Iron Council'' by [[PerdidoStreetStation China Mieville]].

* The Battle of Barnet in the War of the Roses. A cavalry leader took his force charging off on a wild-goose chase, and while they were gone, the two sides shifted positions about ninety degrees. And there was heavy fog.... When the cavalry came back, they mistakenly attacked their own allies' flank.

* ''The Deluge'' (Polish ''Potop'') when Prince Radziwil joins the Swedish, the Polish commanders who refused to join the treachery are imprisoned. There is a battle when their units try to break them out. Finally, the literal cavalry (the protagonist's unit) arrives... except he had unwittingly made a pledge on his soul to serve the prince, just in time to get himself stuck on the wrong side.

* In an inversion of the above, Hitler also played this role in the areas of Europe the Soviets occupied prior to 1941. Indeed, many guerrilla organization (such as the Forest Brothers and the UPA) saw him as a potential savior, only to find themselves surrounded by Fieldgrau and Panzers gunning for them (though Hitler did allow some Anti-Soviet fighters to join his puppet organizations).

* The end of the original ''NightOfTheLivingDead'' movie where the black survivor thinks he is rescued only to be shot by the redneck posse that mistakes him for a zombies.

** Towards the end of ''[[ExpansionPack Awakening]]'' [[spoiler:you have the option of doing this to the City of Amaranthine. The city has been overwhelmed by darkspawn while [[PlayerHeadquarters Vigil's Keep]] has been ambushed by an even larger darkspawn army. You have the option to burn the city down with ArrowsOnFire, killing all the people and darkspawn that your soldiers have trapped inside, freeing you to save your fortress. Fortunately, you can TakeAThirdOption and save everyone.]]

** They're really weird about it, too. When they were winning, they were whining and feeling guilty about it. But when you choose ''not'' to [[DyingLikeAnimals die like your colleagues]] and instead start [[OneManArmy slaughtering them wholesale]] in return, they get bitchy, scrawling misspelled death threats on the walls and swearing vengeance. It makes killing them the most fun you'll have until a force-feedback codpiece is invented.

* JackChalker's ''Lilith: A Snake in the Grass'' features the sudden arrival of troops supposed to aid the witches in their attack on the protagonist's enemy, only, of course, for both defenders and cavalry to turn on the witches, the protagonist realizing he'd been a XanatosSucker in a plan to get rid of the witches.