Anti-Hero Team

"So here we are. A thief, two thugs, an assassin, and a maniac."

— Peter Quill, Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) (trailer)

An Anti-Hero Team is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, a group of people consisting of Anti Heroes. Sometimes, there will be an Anti-Villain on the team or even an Ideal Hero or The Cape. In that case, it will be a mixed team. Both Token Good Teammates and Token Evil Teammates can show up on these teams. The mix of exact moral alignments makes these types ripe for internal conflict, but when push comes to shove, they stick by each other more often than not.

Often leads to Black-and-Gray Morality, Grey-and-Gray Morality, Blue-and-Orange Morality, or Polite Villains, Rude Heroes. Overlaps often with Rag Tag Bunch Of Misfits and/or Neighbourhood-Friendly Gangsters when the gangsters or rogues in question are the good guys.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Black Clover: The Black Bulls are a group of societal misfits who often cause unintentional destruction in their wake. They have little disregard for authority, breaking into the Magic Parliament Courthouse to save Asta and Nero. As Yami puts it, they'll become scoundrels or traitors if their members are messed with.
• Darkness Heels -Lili-: The Darkness Heels (composed by Ultraman Belial, Camearra, Evil Tiga, Dark Zagi, Jugglus Juggler and Lili) are built up to be a team of very reluctant anti-heroes composed of a power-hungry galactic conqueror (Belial), a possessive and jealous conqueror (Camearra), a manipulative and ambitious individual who wished to rule Earth (Evil Tiga), a cunning berserker who wished to cause ruin (Dark Zagi), an Anti-Villain/Anti-Hero swordsman obsessed with proving his strength at all costs (Jugglus Juggler) and finally a supporter of an oppressive regime who slowly grows a consciense (Lili). It's telling that Lili is so far the least evil and closest to pure good out of the team.
• The protagonists of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind are a group of Italian mafiosi who are fully willing to kill and torture their enemies, as well as commit various other crimes if necessary, but nevertheless have morals and are fighting for what they believe is right. Polnareff muses that all of them are society's outcasts, but they may be the world's only hope.
• One Piece: The Straw Hat Pirates, the main characters, don't really care about politics, and as a rule have a "live and let live" attitude when it comes to the oppressive customs of countries they visit. Barbaric cruelty towards the helpless and/or innocent WILL rouse their anger, but in general they only fight tyrants when It's Personal. That being said, due their friendliness and generally good nature, they tend to make friends wherever they go. As a result, they almost always inevitably come in conflict with oppressive regimes harming their new allies. When they topple said regime to save them, they earn the friendship of all the inhabitants of islands they liberated.
• Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt: The protagonists. The titular duo are a pair of Jerkass Nominal Heroes who really don't want to their job, though Stocking evolves into a Pragmatic Hero, only to be revealed to be The Mole the whole time. Garterbelt is a generally good person, but he'll rape little boys for the sake of keeping the power of Hell's Gate out of the wrong hands, and he even enjoys what he does. Chuck is too stupid and is too unlucky to be a valuable teammate. Finally, there's Brief, the only truly white-hat-hero character in the series, but he's a useless Classical Anti-Hero and Dogged Nice Guy towards Panty who has the power to unleash Hell on Earth.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica: The five Magical Girls are mostly anti-heroic: Madoka herself is a Classical Anti-Hero, Mami looks like a heroic character but is ultimately a Knight in Sour Armor, while Sayaka is a truly heroic character but veers right into the Knight Templar and eventually Tragic Hero territory. Meanwhile, Kyouko and Homura are Unscrupulous Heroes, with a key difference that Kyouko only cares about herself, while Homura's motivations revolve around another person, specifically, Madoka.
• Rebuild World: Sheryl's gang, the support structure Akira builds for himself with Sheryl acting as Supporting Leader to make up for his No Social Skills, is one that dominates the slums using fear. Akira himself is an Unscrupulous Hero who has a strange view of morality, Sheryl is a Guile Hero expert at influencing men via Honey Trap, Katsuragi is a duplicitous Arms Dealer, Viola is a Knowledge Broker constantly Playing Both Sides, Inabe is a manipulative Corrupt Corporate Executive, Erio is a former The Starscream who got set straight, Colbert is a shady Shell-Shocked Veteran underworld enforcer, Carol is a Predatory Prostitute who drives men to ruin, Babalodo robbed his former team to pay Carol and got stuck in Indentured Servitude, and Revin… is just Butt-Monkey under similar servitude.
• GTO: The Early Years: The Oni-Baku and their friends are a gang of Japanese Delinquents who are really only heroes because they're the protagonists, and almost all their enemies are even worse. Eikichi, Ryuji, Saejima, Kamata, and Katsuyuki are the most violent, but Abe and Makoto are unrepentant horndogs, and Shinomi's basically a female Eikichi in terms of her personality. Tsukai is a Nice Guy compared to the others, but still pretty Hot-Blooded when people badmouth his girlfriend Yui. She's probably the only one who doesn't actually engage in violence (though she has shown a willingness to).
• Ultimate Muscle: Generation X are part of the Muscle League, but their members include Clioneman/Hydrazoa, who dismisses fellow Muscle Leaguer Seiuchin/Wally Tusket's Small Steps Hero approach and hospitalized him, and Dead Signal/Road Rage, who is obsessed with rules and yet oddly has no problem with Loophole Abuse when it comes to weapons and taking hostages in a match. Demonstrating the uniqueness of the trope, they have a Token Good Teammate in Jade/Jeager, who is by far the least brutal and most conventionally heroic of the team and befriends the rest of the Muscle League, and a Token Evil Teammate in Scarface/Eskara, Who's actually The Remnant to the dMp, the Nebulous Evil Organization the Muscle League fought and defeated in the first season.
• YuYu Hakusho: Team Urameshi is one of these, consisting of individuals like the Honor-bound Delinquent Kuwabara, Jerk with a Heart of Gold Yusuke Urameshi, Strategist Supreme Kurama, and Token Evil Teammate Hiei. In addition, Cynical Mentor Genkai, who sometimes gets involved in the team's conflicts, also qualifies.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: The main five pilots definitely count as this. Asuka is a female Jerkass, Shinji is a textbook Lovable Coward with a laundry list of neuroses, Rei is The Stoic who only cares about what her commander wants, Touji is the Token Good Teammate who only lasts an episode and Kaworu is The Mole sent to cause Third Impact.

Comic Books

• Marvel Comics also has Daimon Hellstrom: The Son Of Satan. The Badass Crew he joins in Marvel Zombies 3 is a team of antiheroes, including Morbius the Living Vampire and Werewolf by Night.
• The late 1980s and early 1990s had the Teen Titans' sister team, the "Team Titans," who were this to the point that one of them took to calling himself Deathwing.
• The Outsiders, Batman created them to be superhero black-ops team to take on missions the Justice League wouldn't normally do out in the open.
• While the Thunderbolts are more of a villain team, the Marvel NOW! team is an anti-hero team, consisting of killers led by General Ross, the Red Hulk. It consists of the Punisher, Elektra, Deadpool, the Leader and Agent Venom. Of everyone on the team, Agent Venom is the only straight-up hero.
• The Guardians of the Galaxy, like their film counterparts below, feature the half Spartax Starlord, the deadliest woman in the galaxy Gamora, Rocket Raccoon, Groot, and Drax the Destroyer. They also feature members such as Angela, Iron Man, Mantis, and Kitty Pryde.
  • Ironically, the original Guardians, back in the 1970s (and from the 31st century—why yes, they were Marvel's answer to the Legion Of Superheroes) were a straight up heroic team, right up to a former Avenger, Vance Astro, wielding Captain America's shield.
• Suicide Squad, verging very close to a straight up Villain Team, they're still forced to carry out heroics by their boss, Amanda Waller.
• The underlying concept of My Little Pony: Nightmare Knights. The security at Eris' casino only allows entry by the worst and the villainous, so Princess Luna can't rely on the usual, heroic, protagonists; instead she has to assemble a team of reasonably reformed villains to fit the bill.
• The Transformers (IDW): The Wreckers, the team the Autobots send in when a mission absolutely has to be carried out, no matter the cost. Their members have included a former Dirty Cop whose beating of Megatron in his cell ultimately caused the war, a trainer who would murder his students on the say-so of the god of death's voice in his head and a brutal thug who used to be Megatron's coworker, and their missions are noted for an unusually high density of war crimes. About the only reason they're not the bad guys is that they do fight for the good side and are willing to fight on through heavy losses to carry out the mission.

Fan Works

• In Brave New World, we have Team Quantum's Aeon. The rest of Team Quantum still count, but Aeon takes it further when he sucks Team Ebony in his stomach-mouth and puts them through Training from Hell. As a reward, they are now fearless and can use time-themed attacks, but are severely traumatized as a result. Even the rest of Team Quantum didn't like what he did.
• Child of the Storm has the Avengers, based on their MCU counterparts who are also this, with the addition of a Reformed, but Not Tamed Loki to the roster. On the one hand, they're arguably more prone to doing questionable things than their canon counterparts in some respects, but on the other, they try to apprehend rather than kill where they can while on Avengers duty, and individually, Thor and Tony are more classically heroic (if in a Knight in Sour Armor sort of way in Tony's case), with Thor being a textbook Knight In Shining Armour.
• The Outlaws in The Virtue of Revenge are a team of superheroes who have no issues with killing their enemies as well as torturing them. This puts them at odds with the Justice League, who adhere heavily to a Thou Shalt Not Kill policy.
• The Slayer, Ricky, and I.M.P in The Wanderers and Hunters of Hell (and Ricky) are this. The Slayer is a massive dick who wants to kill his teammates and almost everyone around him thanks to his immense hatred for demons and is actively holding himself back in that regard, Ricky is a weed-addicted moron who gets on everyone's nerves, and the members I.M.P are all assassins who are only interested in killing Vagabond for the reward money and tow the line from being reasonable (Moxxie and Millie) to utter jackasses (Loona).
• Infinity Train: Knight of the Orange Lily: The White Gestalt are all filled with anti-heroes in someway: Gladion and London fall under Knight in Sour Armor (with London receiving Adaptational Heroism compared to his Lucha Underground iteration), Specter is an Unscrupulous Hero (who was once part of the villanous Knights of Hanoi), and Tokio is a Classical Anti-Hero.
• One for All and Eight for the Ninth has the Tea Spillers, composed of Mr. Compress, Gentle Criminal, La Brava and Twice. They want to be famous, and chose to do so by exposing corrupt organizations such as the Hero Commission and the Meta Liberation Army.

Films — Live-Action

• In Justice League, there's at least Batman (who's on a redemption path after giving up his Terror Hero ways he displayed in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice) and Aquaman (whose noble side only kicks in when he realizes how big the threat to Earth is).
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In The Avengers (2012), the eponymous team is comprised of one hero, four anti-heroes, and one anti-heroine. Moreover, the anti-heroic characters exemplify different shades of anti-heroism: Bruce is a Classical Anti-Hero (Hulk is a Nominal Hero), Tony and Thor are Knights in Sour Armor, while Hawkeye and Black Widow are Unscrupulous Heroes. Captain America is the only proper hero on this superhero team — though Thor is on the borderline.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy (2014): The eponymous Guardians are a straight-up bunch of anti-heroes, with the team being made up of thieves, career criminals, and assassins.
• The Four Horsemen of Now You See Me both parts 1 & 2. The magicians do semi-heroic acts, but in a larcenous manner. They also have some fairly dark backstories, and are motivated by jealousy and revenge.
• The Ocean's Eleven team are all criminals: master thieves, con men, hackers, and so forth. However, the audience are given a rooting interest in them because their targets tend to be actual villains who have it coming to them.

Literature

• The quest in Below qualifies. Gareth runs a small criminal empire; although most of his henchmen are decent guys, they know what he does. Brenish and his friends are highwaymen. The only true innocent is Cirawyn, who's there as a hostage.
• Six of Crows: The main characters are criminals hired for The Caper. They're all violent killers, (except Wylan) and verge on a Villain Team-Up.
• The Blood Order in Theriomorph Chronicles qualifies. Warren Hiedler is a Social Darwinistic messiah and salvator to the Theriomorphs, Meredith Young is a Unscrupulous Hero and a seductress, Dalton Francis a mad brute and Rory Kennedy is a idealistic spokesperson and a knight.

Live-Action TV

• The Strike Team from The Shield
• The military team from The Unit. They are a representation of real world US special operations soldiers like Delta Force, Seal Team Six, etc. They are highly trained, efficient, and ruthless. They will do anything needed to complete their missions. Although they operate by some rules and moral codes, they are trained to do things for which the average person would not have the stomach.
• Leverage: Most of the team's members used to be criminals, and even as good guys their methods cross several legal and sometimes even ethical lines (i.e. they have resorted to Gaslighting in no less than three episodes). Eliot is also implied to have innocent blood on his hands and Sophie's past as a grifter is shown to have hurt innocents despite her intentions in "The King George Job".
• In Lexx, the spaceship has a crew of four. Stanley is a cowardly, pathetic, Jerkass Ditz. Zev is spirited but naive with an Extreme Libido. 790 is an obnoxious Yandere robot. The only one with heroic qualities is Kai, a brave warrior-poet leader who made a last stand against the Big Bad and died millennia ago. By the time he joins the crew he is an undead Soulless Shell with minimal identity.
• Team Free Will in Supernatural is composed of a brother who drank demon blood and released Lucifer, another brother who sold his soul to a demon and tortured others in hell, a fallen angel, and an old hunter in a wheelchair. All of them drink too much and can't forgive themselves for past mistakes. They must hide from the law as well as the forces of heaven and hell and support themselves through credit card fraud and hustling pool.
• Person of Interest: Team Machine consists of a softspoken Non-Idle Rich backer for vigilantism who created God, an ex-hitman who likes to shoot people in the knees, a former Dirty Cop, a Sociopathic Hero who just likes to shoot people, and a ruthless hacker/mercenary. And Carter, though she does start to edge towards Anti-Hero before her death.
• The Defenders (2017): Comprised of a jaded private detective who wants nothing to do with the word "hero", a lawyer-slash-vigilante who has to keep his violent tendencies in check, an orphaned rich kid with a lot to prove, and a wrongfully convicted ex-prisoner who's the most straightforwardly heroic of the bunch.
• The Boys (2019): The titular team is composed of Billy Butcher (a former CIA/SAS soldier with an extreme temper and sociopathic tendencies), Frenchie (a Frenchman who used to run in a gang that fought Supes and has connections to The Mafiya), Hughie Campbell (a Naïve Newcomer who who be surprisingly vindictive if pushed far enough), and Kimiko/The Female (who is an ex-terrorist). Only Mother's Milk, a youth corrections officer, can be considered a well adjusted person. Season 2 adds Starlight to the roster, and she's the Token Good Teammate who wants to be an Internal Reformist for Vought.

Pinball

• Heist!: Maggie's crew are all thieves, con-artists, and other less-than-reputable types. However, they're all working to undermine the influence of a Corrupt Corporate Executive who's far worse than they are.

Tabletop Games

• In Mage: The Ascension, the protagonist faction is usually the Traditions as they fight against the "evil, soulless" Technocracy, making the protagonists of Panopticon Quest an Anti Hero Team. The Technocracy obviously has a different view as to who the heroes really are, but given the nature of the setting, most experienced mages or Enlightened Scientists would count as anti heroes.

Video Games

• Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!'s main playable cast consists of an former corporate assassin, a cybernetic mercenary, a sadomasochistic bandit killer, a service bot reprogrammed into a killing machine, a doppleganger for one of the series' future Big Bads, and an amoral, bloodthirsty aristocrat who joins them solely to kill things for fun. They're on a mission to save the moon and the planet it orbits from destruction, but commit morally gray acts to do it along the way with varying degrees of moral dilemmas. If even that.
• Jet Set Radio has the main characters be rollerblading teenage street gangs that cause vandalism via graffiti. But they do so for the sake of freedom of expression against a powerful if tyrannical corporation that has turned Tokyo into what's basically a Police State, as well as just messing with the law enforcement; who want them dead.
• The King of Fighters XI introduces the Anti-Kyokugen Team, consisting of Kasumi Todo, Eiji Kisaragi, and Malin; each of whom has a personal grudge against Ryo Sakazaki, Robert Garcia, and Yuri Sakazaki respectively. Sadly for them, they end up as a comedic group of punch clock villains.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie: C's party is comprised almost entirely of former assassins, terrorists, and other one-time criminals. For most of the game, they work behind the scenes doing what's necessary to uncover the truths behind the current incidents in Crossbell and move the more public-facing heroes in the right direction, including claiming responsibility for an airship hijacking, stealing equipment from an Intelligence Division officer, and breaking into a prison to contact a VIP.
• Shepard and his/her squadmates from the Mass Effect series, especially if Shepard is being played as a Renegade. The squad from Mass Effect 2 is the most clear cut example, as Shepard is joined by two members of a paramilitary terrorist organization, a vigilante, a Deadly Doctor, a master assassin, an Ax-Crazy biotic convict, a genetically "perfect" member of a Proud Warrior Race, a Knight Templar who can be replaced by her Sex Demon daughter, a Geth Platform, a master thief, and an Only in It for the Money mercenary. Tali is the only member who doesn't qualify as an Anti-Hero, and she makes it clear she is only there as a favor to Shepard.
• Persona 5: The Phantom Thieves of Hearts are made up of delinquents and social outcasts who feel repressed in their daily lives and use their powers to correct the injustices of the world around them, regardless of the legality of their actions.
• Rise of the Third Power: Most party members are filled with less than ideal heroes who struggle to work together due to differing goals and values.
  • Rowan is an alcoholic with a Hair-Trigger Temper against any authority figure who gets in his way and cannot negotiate his way out of a paper bag.
  • Corrina is a Blood Knight who wants to die in the glory of battle.
  • Arielle is a Classical Anti-Hero who spent most of her life as a sheltered princess with no political experience, making it hard for her to prove her legitimacy or convince Tariq to aid the Resistance.
  • Reyna is so desperate to prevent a war that she's willing to take advantage of Rowan's feelings for her to get him to work for the Resistance.
  • Aden has no interest in the Resistance's ideals and only works with the party to kill his sister.
  • Although not to the same extent as Gage, Rashim has a self-righteous streak and looks down on other party members for their less heroic backgrounds.
  • Natasha is a former Arkadyan spy who helped Noraskov take over Arkadya in the first place, which she admits that she can never redeem herself for. While she's with the Resistance now, she's still willing to resort to extreme measures to stop her former boss.
  • Prince Gage is complicit in Noraskov's fascist purging of his own citizens, something that the party won't let him forget even after he joins.
• The Homura Crimson Squad of Senran Kagura fame become this after the events of the first game, when they abandon Hebijo Clandestine Girls' Academy and become renegades. While they're technically no longer evil shinobi (though that moniker really didn't mean much even then), they're not as morally upright as the Hanzo elites and are more dedicated to their own personal business than being heroes. That said, they have a strong habit of getting involved against the forces of evil and fighting alongside their rivals regardless, and in Deep Crimson, they're acting as more "proper" heroes since they're protecting citizens from the yoma out of their own free will while the Hanzo elites are also dealing with more morally-grey actions such as their orders to kill a seemingly-innocent person the yoma are after.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Team Chaotix. They'll do good, but they expect to be paid-handsomely. Vector at least has his better moments, such as finding a kid's lost toy for free.
  • Team Dark, consisting of Shadow, Rouge, and E-123 Omega, have been this ever since Sonic Heroes. They may help save the world, but mainly for their different reasons. Shadow only fights whoever gets in the way of his goals, Rouge is only interested in jewels, and Omega attacks whatever the former two point him at.
• Star Fox: The Star Wolf team started as a generic "evil Star Fox" group, but in sequels, the team becomes more anti-heroic. The removal of the two "scum" characters Pigma (a traitor) and Andrew (nephew of the main villain in Star Fox 64) and the addition of a ladies' man named Panther (who falls in love with a character on the heroes team) gave them an opportunity to work with Star Fox.
• Tales of Berseria: The playable characters are a demon who eats other demons, a slave who has broken free of his binds, a traitor to the holy faction of the world, a Blood Knight samurai who only cares about beating one opponent, the first mate of the world's most infamous pirate crew, and a cynical witch who loves to push people's buttons, and that's not counting the people they kidnapped and forced to join them. They're outright called "a group of villains" at one point.
  • Though to be fair to the traitor, she basically had no choice but to join at the point she did because she had at that point realized going with the more heroic looking faction would actually screw over the entire world. In fact, at first, she fully intends to be The Mole, but circumstances completely change when she is given proof of the Abbey's corruption, and even worse, its dogmatic extremism in just how it tries to go about saving the world. In terms of moral fiber, Eleanor never changes her ideals, she just matures them to fit a more Gray-and-Grey Morality world. Tellingly, by the end of the game, she joins back up with the once-villainous faction as their Christ-figure and leader, and uses what she learned traveling with Velvet's party to make the Abbey actually heroic, and starts the Shepard system that would protect the world all the way up to the sequel. Which, by the way, is a period of many thousands of years.

Visual Novels

• The playable cast of Spirit Hunter: NG are all societal outcasts in one way or another. Main character Akira is an anti-social underground fighter, his best friend Seiji is the heir to a Yakuza family, Kaoru is an occult Idol Singer with hidden Guile Hero tendencies, Ban is an unethical journalist, Rosé is a stage magician with criminal tendencies, and Ooe is a Cowboy Cop who doesn't play by the rules. Their collective lack of morals does come in useful when they need to break into forbidden areas to investigate spirits.

Web Original

• Critical Role:
  • In the first campaign, Vox Machina is this, which is pretty standard for a D&D adventuring party, best emphasized in Episode 26. Keyleth means well, but is a Classical Antihero with her self-doubt and awkwardness; Tiberius is a classist loner without remorse for buzz-sawing an old woman to death; Vax and Vex are prideful (nearly to the point of self-destruction in Episodes 24/25) and money-obsessed, respectively; Percy seemed level-headed, but is hiding a survivor complex among other psychological issues that are only getting worse with time; Grog doesn't even bother with a pretense of Good, being a Blood Knight hedonist with a Chaotic Neutral alignment and only his alignment sets him apart from Scanlan. Even Pike slit an unconscious guard's throat once (and paid for it). The Whitestone arc also has a lot of the team getting darker and darker, with enemies who are running away being executed, being tortured, and instigating a violent, bloody revolution.
  • In the second campaign, there's the Mighty Nein. It consists of a kleptomaniac rogue who rarely thinks things through (Nott), a Byronic, Unscrupulous Hero of a wizard (Caleb), a cynical, self-described asshole (Beau), an tactless and amoral (if chipper and good-hearted) trickster (Jester), a Consummate Liar of a carny who's more than willing to scam people out of their money (Mollymauk), a warlock who appears to have made a pact with an Eldritch Abomination (Fjord), and a fallen angel barbarian from a hostile nation (Yasha). All of them are pretty eager to commit various crimes, including theft, buying drugs, mail fraud, and even pirating a ship. As Matt says in Episode 35:
    Matt: This is not a moral group. By any stretch of the imagination.
    • Later, they're joined by a mellow grave cleric that serves to balance out most of the other members (Caduceus), and the secretive shadowhand of the aforementioned hostile nation.

Western Animation

• All of the Titans in Teen Titans Go!. They're more childish and less serious than the usual depictions of this trope, but also portrayed far less sympathetically than their previous animated incarnation, often times being Heroic Comedic Sociopaths with skewed morality and few traces of nobility.

---