History Main / LittleHeroBigWar

* [[TropeOverdosed One of the most well-known examples:]] ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'': A century-long, genocidal conflict between every nation on Earth/wherever (admittedly, there are only four, well, three, now). The main cast? [[CompetenceZone Teenagers]] riding around having magic adventures on a [[GiantFlyer flying bison]]. The [[KidHero Hero]]? Twelve years old (at least, [[ReallySevenHundredYearsOld biologically]]). ''Avatar'' is an interesting case; part of the premise is that Aang really ''needs'' to get involved in the war in order to bring it to a desirable conclusion, but he needs to master the [[ElementalPowers four elements]] before he can really make an impact on it, and needs to stay out of the way of the major fighting until he is ready for it (not to mention his personal hang-ups about being the Avatar.) The beginning of the second season even has an Earth Kingdom general showing Aang wounded soldiers and trying to convince him that he needs to partake in the fighting. As the series progresses, they get more and more directly involved with the war effort (with much of the second season revolving around getting vital intelligence to the Earth Kingdom high command, and the third season revolving around implementing each side's endgame strategies.)

** Pretty much the way ''VideoGame/WarcraftIII'' works period. It's hard to raise a large, useful army when you've got a food cap of 100(''90'' before the expansion), going over certain food limits taxes your gold supply and there are units that can use '''7''' food ([[UpToEleven 8]] with [[InstantAwesomeJustAddDragons neutral dragons]]); this probably stems from the fact that the game was originally planned to be much closer to what [=DotA=] is. It is also justified by engine limitations: the game can only support about 200 units per player before slowing down.

** Likewise is ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTactics''. Ramza doesn't care about [[DeadlyDecadentCourt Ivalician politics]] or the War of the Lions. He just wants his sister back, which incidentally means kicking [[DemonicInvaders the Lucavi]] out of Ivalice. His actions ''are'' vitally important to the course of the war, but not intentionally; he just kills off several claimants to the throne while fighting the Lucavi, [[spoiler: allowing Delita to wipe the rest off the map and end up with the Princess and the throne]].

->''"Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love."''
-->-- ''Peter Jackson''

* In the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' book ''Discworld/{{Jingo}}'', the main plot has Vimes and the City Watch trying to solve an assassination attempt on a Prince, while, pretty much in the background, Ankh-Morpork slowly gets ready for a war with Klatch. [[spoiler: Of course, it's all connected, and Vimes is able to solve the case, buying the Patrician enough time to prevent the war, JustInTime.]]
** ''Discworld/MonstrousRegiment'' - the eponymous regiment is obviously part of the army, but an untrained and very minor part, which over the course of the book never actually gets involved in a battle - what it does is ''much'' more important than that.

* As far as specific people go, there's Creator/MarcoPolo. At a time when the Mongols were the dominant power of the Eastern Hemisphere and Europeans, Muslims, Japanese, etc. were working ''really'' hard not to lose their independence to TheHorde, Polo went on a trip all the way to the court of Kublai Khan himself and eventually had a record of all that he saw there put together. His account sparked a deep interest in the East among Europeans, and the resulting efforts of Europeans to consume any goods and knowledge from China, India, and elsewhere helped jump-start the Renaissance and the discovery of the Americas.

** The [[Anime/MobileSuitGundamSEED Cosmic Era]] gets into this, too, with ''Manga/GundamSEEDAstray Astray'' and ''MobileSuitGundamSEEDCE73Stargazer''.

* Manga/ThePromisedNeverland: One of the main challenges for the main characters and their group of escapees. They're small, and everyone who wants to kill them is so much bigger and stronger than them. And in the end they're the population of one farm against an entire world that isn't interested in letting the status quo change. [[spoiler: Even their own kind.]]

** The latter continues in the [[VideoGame/AssassinsCreedIII|third numbered game]], where Ratonhnhaké:ton/Connor interacts with several key figures during UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution and even participating in important battles.

* ''[[WebVideo/CriticalRole]]'s'' second season sees the Dwendalian Empire and the Kryn Dynasty officially go to war with each other in Episode 18. The Mighty Nein pointedly avoids getting directly involved the conflict, instead taking mercenary jobs and pursuing personal goals that specifically take them outside the Empire, to avoid the possibility of a draft. [[spoiler:By Episode 57, the fighting has escalated to a point where the Nein feel they can no longer ignore the war, and Caleb proposes that they [[TakeAThirdOption set themselves to the goal of]] [[PreventTheWar preventing the war]], or at least minimizing the casualties and damage caused by it.]]

* Across the various storylines of ''Machinima/RedVsBlue'', the Red and Blue simulation troops aren't even fighting in the war against the UNSC and aliens. They're just the bottom-of-the-barrel failures they've asigned in backwater planets to test out various combat scenarios. As a result, the amount of aliens the Red and Blue teams have actually encountered can be counted on one hand, and most don't even realize the war's been over for a few years in an uneasy peace. While the super soldiers that took part in Project Freelancer were combat-ready troops outfitted with armor enhancements and AI implants, they're still only a costly fringe experiment that are dealing with inter-human infighting and not actually part of the war either. Through implication, they did act as the blueprints for the later Spartan soldiers and thanks to the Director drastically changed Artificial Intelligence testing, so not entirely a footnote in human history at least. Even when the Reds and Blues do get involved in a proper war, it's still on the extremely remote colony world of Chorus. The civel war that's been going on for a generation has killed off much of the already small population and it's now a few thousand exhausted men and women locked in a tired cycle of vengence.

->''"The Milky Way galaxy is a big place. So big, in fact, that attempting to tell its story would be a job for {{God}}, or maybe Creator/RobertJordan. It's the smaller stories that interest us, the galactic mega-epic is just an out-of-focus backdrop for individual heroes and villains."''
-->-- ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary''

* A whole civil war is going on in the background while you fight for the highest bidder in ''{{Mechwarrior 4}}: Mercenaries''. Although towards the end you do start to get missions throwing you into some of the fighting of the Fedcom civil war.

* In ''VideoGame/MechWarrior 2'', which side you're on and how well you do in your missions has ''no impact whatsoever'' in the story scenes between missions that describe how the war as a whole is going. This continues no matter how high in rank you get (With the highest possible rank being supreme military commander of your faction).

->''The Milky Way galaxy is a big place. So big, in fact, that attempting to tell its story would be a job for {{God}}, or maybe Creator/RobertJordan. It's the smaller stories that interest us, the galactic mega-epic is just an out-of-focus backdrop for individual heroes and villains.''

* ''TheWitcher'' remains this through most of the game. The principle of neutrality is often emphasized, up to the point where the player must make a choice that will put Geralt against one or all sides of a war. In the novels, maintaining neutrality becomes a greater and greater dilemma for Geralt of Rivia.

** Likewise is ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTactics''. Ramza doesn't care about [[DeadlyDecadentCourt Ivalician politics]] or the Lion War. He wants his sister back, which incidentally means kicking DemonicInvaders out of Ivalice. His actions ''are'' vitally important to the course of the war, but not intentionally; he just kills off several claimants to the throne while fighting the Lucavi, [[spoiler: allowing Delita to wipe the rest off the map and end up with the Princess and the throne]].

* Played straight and averted in ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse''. While the Crystal Gems did fight in a war against [[TheEmpire Homeworld]] Gems, flashbacks and accounts given suggest that the Crystal Gems numbered in the hundreds, if not thousands of Gem troops, and the very few that have survived it are just the friends their leader Rose Quartz was able to save at the last second from something akin to a DroneOfDread crossed with a FantasticNuke. More generally, while the war for Earth was a turning point in Gem history, it was still only one of several colonies Homeworld has conquered across the universe over a period of several thousand years.

* ''Film/{{Dunkirk}}'' depicts the titular historical event (the rescue of over 300,000 British soldiers from northern France during the second world war) from the perspective of three small groups of characters. One such group are made up of [[PinballProtagonist pinball protagonists]] who are just trying to survive and don't make any plot-relevant decisions (which is lampshaded).

* Creator/TadWilliams enjoys this trope, a good part of the cast of the ''Literature/{{Otherland}}'' novels are little heroes in a big... conspiracy and the main character of ''Literature/MemorySorrowandThorn'' keeps repeating how he is just a little scullion until cast and readers alike want him to shut up about it.

->The Milky Way galaxy is a big place. So big, in fact, that attempting to tell its story would be a job for {{God}}, or maybe Creator/RobertJordan. It's the smaller stories that interest us, the galactic mega-epic is just an out-of-focus backdrop for individual heroes and villains.

[[/folder]]

* ''VideoGame/MountAndBlade'' is firmly built around this trope. The entire region in which the setting takes place, Calradia, [[{{CrapsackWorld}} is in a state of perpetual war]] between the nations that it is composed of, while the player character is an immigrant fresh off the boat/caravan/mountain trail who is [[{{WideOpenSandbox}} pursuing their own goals and ambitions]]. At first, this entails riding about the land (fully on their own or with a [[{{ArmyOfThievesAndWhores}} small group of NPC hirelings]]) and clashing with (or running away from) small bands of ruffians, bandits or deserters from any of the numerous armies, all while the war rages in the background. Over time, the player character might develop their small band into a [[{{PrivateMilitaryContractors}} larger, well-equipped mercenary company]] and sign a contract with one of the factions (or join up as a regular soldier with the use of certain mods), riding into battle with one or two of the local lords, maybe even besieging a castle...while the larger war rages in the background. With further time and effort, the player character might even become ennobled and pledge vassalage to a local king, being granted a small village and a castle to rule it from, or capture and claim a castle all by themselves, either becoming a rebel faction (M&B) or declaring their own kingdom with their companions as vassals (Warband)...[[{{RuleOfThree}} all while the war rages in the background]], constant and unchanging. Yes, you can get quite far in the game and leave your mark in various ways, although it requires a ''lot'' of time and effort, but you will '''not''' win a (major) battle all by yourself, you will '''not''' get far without connections and royal patronage at some point, and, as a general rule, you will '''not''' be able (unless really an ''awful'' lot of time and effort is sunk into the game) to affect the ForeverWar in a lasting and significant way.

* ''Literature/RedStormRising'' by Creator/TomClancy plays on this theme, in a story about a WorldWarThree fought only with conventional weapons, with multiple small groups of military personnel having some small impact on the overall progress of the war in various ways that collectively get more coverage than the supposed "big men" commanding the respective militaries.

* ''Literature/TheBalancedSword'' is set at a time when the demon king Kerlamion launches an attempt at world domination, leading to a war between the army of the Hells and the massed defensive forces of the Dragon King and the God-Emperor of the Mountain -- which takes place entirely off the page, while the protagonists track down and confront a BigBad who is using Kerlamion's invasion as a springboard for his own scheme.
* ''Literature/ConsiderPhlebas'' is all about this -- it's a minor sideshow in a vast interstellar war that, according to the end footnotes, is rather insignificant itself on the galactic scale of things.