The Magnificent Seven Samurai

aka: Magnificent Seven Samurai

Top: Original Japanese flavor, Bottom: Cajun-style

Chris: There's a job for six men, watching over a village, south of the border.
O'Reilly: How big's the opposition?
Chris: Thirty guns.
O'Reilly: I admire your notion of fair odds, mister.

— The Magnificent Seven

So you're one of a group of farmers whose village is under attack by a gang of remorseless bandits. None of you know how to fight, so you leave to hire a group of warriors who are willing to defend you for the pittance you can pay, plus meals. So you come back with seven guys and... hey, Wait a minute, haven't we seen this somewhere before?

No, you haven't been reading TV Tropes for so long that everything is blending together. This is actually a relatively common plot device. Take the basic plot of a bunch of cool guys + awesome goal + clearly defined personality types + any other overtones of Seven Samurai you can think of and bam! Instant "team on a mission" story!

Because Seven Samurai contains many plot elements which are not exclusive to Japanese culture, it's easy to shift the basic narrative around and still get a workable movie angle. In fact, it's such a classically popular example of a narrative that many filmmakers don't even bother being subtle in the process of Homage — there's a lot more movies out there with exactly seven heroes doing this kind of plot than you'd expect.

The trope title and namers are Seven Samurai (Shichinin no samurai) and The Magnificent Seven, the latter of which is famous for both transferring the Kurosawa classic to the Old West (with Kurosawa's blessing) and being a classic in its own right. (A trivial note: Seven Samurai was originally released in the USA as The Magnificent Seven; the English title was changed to a direct translation of the Japanese title later to avoid confusion with the remake.) Nevertheless, this trope is Older Than Feudalism, going as far back as Aeschylus's play Seven Against Thebes. The actual Trope Codifiers within Japan itself are probably the Eight Dog Warriors of Hakkenden (who were in turn inspired by the 108 heroes of Water Margin).

The plot is pretty predictable, but always fun.

1. The Hero will receive the Call to Adventure. He will then assemble a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits.
   • The Lancer (if not immediately present, The Hero always knows exactly where to find one)
   • The Big Guy
   • The Smart Guy
   • The Old Guy (sometimes a Shell-Shocked Veteran)
   • The Young Guy
   • The Funny Guy
2. The team finds that the people they are trying to protect are largely unwilling or unable to fight for themselves.
3. The team successfully stands off the first attack.
4. The people realize that they can defend themselves, and the team undertakes Training the Peaceful Villagers.
5. The team is forced to leave, whether due to the skepticism or wariness of the villagers or threats from the villains.
6. The team decides to return.
7. The team sends one or more of them as scouts to sneak into the enemy's camp/lair hoping that they can find a weakness to exploit or get rid of the enemy's most powerful weapon.
8. There is another attack; the people join in both enthusiastically and competently. Several of the team are injured or killed; the attackers are defeated soundly, but not always completely.
9. The people indicate that they now can and will defend themselves when and if the attackers return. What remains of the team departs.

See also Training the Peaceful Villagers. Compare A Fistful of Rehashes, which focuses on works resembling Yojimbo, another samurai film that inspired a Western remake of its own.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• A.I.C.O. Incarnation: Seven soldiers escort a holy maiden through a corrupted landscape as political forces out of sight threaten to compromise their relatively straightforward mission.
• Gamba No Bouken: Gamba and six other mice travel to an island to help a mouse colony being terrorized by weasels.
• A three-part story arc in the anime version of Fist of the North Star 2 featured Kenshiro teaming up with a gang of post-apocalyptic cowboys clearly modeled after The Magnificent Seven. Even the group's name, "The Wasteland Seven", is taken from the Japanese title of The Magnificent Seven.
• Inverted in GaoGaiGar, in the second half of the series the seven most powerful villains show up to challenge the heroes. The fan translation of the series even refers to them as the "Magnificent 7 Machine World Primevals".
• Briefly alluded to in the first Goblin Slayer light novel. When Goblin Slayer asks for help against the Goblin army that will be moving against the farm where he lives Spearman and Witch are the only ones from outside of his party to volunteer to help him. As Dwarf Shaman, High Elf Archer and Lizardman Priest come down to join them Witch murmurs, " So that makes six of us. Or will it be seven?". It's at this point Guild Girl takes things in a different direction by pulling strings and getting the rest of the Guild on board with defending the farm. After this, Goblin Slayer turns around to find that Priestess had been standing in his blind spot, staff in hand and ready to go, without saying a word. Witch's count had been correct and it indeed had been seven.
• Kinnikuman, the Planet Rakka mini-arc. The child-like Choujin Beansman comes to Earth to recruit Choujin to help save his people from the Space Samurai, and teams up with Terryman, Ramenman, Brocken Jr., Puyo Puyo, and Crystalman, with Kin forcing himself into the group. Together, they are the Magnificent Choujin 6!
  Kinnikuman: Hey, there are seven of us!
• The third Mobile Suit Crossbone Gundam manga, Steel Seven, has this built into it: remnants of the Jupiter Empire are building a super-massive colony laser in Jovian orbit with the intent of blasting Earth. The only method of getting to Jupiter in time to stop the weapon is a flying wing that can only carry roughly seven Mobile Suits, so The Hero goes around trying to recruit the best pilots he can find.
  • One of the good guys explicitly makes the reference, commenting "I love Kurosawa movies!" when the plan is discussed.
• Monster Rancher episode "The Courageous Seven" loosely follows the standard formula. The biggest difference is that the village in distress needs to be protected more from a disaster caused by the bad guys.
• In Naruto the first major arc, the Land of Waves, quickly turns into this plot. Team 7 is hired to act as bodyguards for a cantankerous old man named Tazuna but instead of protecting him from ordinary bandits on the journey home, they discover he has been marked for death by Gatou, a shipping magnate and crime lord. Gatou has taken over his impoverished country and wants to stop Tazuna from building a bridge to the mainland and thus break his economic tyranny, and has hired dangerous ninja assassin Momochi Zabuza and his gang of missing-nin to take him out. It ends with the people of Tazuna's village being inspired to make a stand against Gatou's army of hoodlums.
• Moriarty the Patriot's arc The Valley of Fellows is a riff on The Magnificent Seven, with Sherlock, Billy, and five other outsiders being the only ones to help protect Vermissa Valley from the Scrowrers. At the end, there's even a shot of the tombstone for the fallen calling them "The Magnificents" and revealing that the bodyguard character Goodnight Lowe is also Birdy Edwards from The Valley of Fear.
• Samurai 7 obviously, in that its stated premise is Seven Samurai With (Steam Punk) Mecha.
• The Seven Deadly Sins: The series kicks off with Princess Elizabeth of Lioness attempting to reunite the titular band of warriors to free her kingdom from the oppression of the Holy Knights.
• Yona of the Dawn: In spirit, "The Dark Dragon and the Happy Hungry Bunch" become this to the common-folk of the Fire Tribe after protecting them from abusive Fire Tribe soldiers.

Comic Books

• The ABC Warriors - they are even referred to as 'The Mek-Nificent Seven', both in-story and by fans.
• Demon Knights: Writer Paul Cornell describes the book as "the medieval Magnificent Seven". #3 is titled "The Malificant Seven". Subverted by the end of the first arc - the village they were protecting is rubble, there are few if any survivors among the villagers, and the heroes' "victory" is that they live to fight again.
• Marvel Adventures: Avengers had an issue like this. In accordance with the series's early title theme of altering famous movie titles, this was called The Avenging Seven. It actually did include a little village beset by raiders, had someone travel far with the village's single most precious treasure, had an extended sequence of Training the Peaceful Villagers, and at the end the heroes were paid in three tons of food.
• Star Wars (Marvel 1977) (the original Star Wars comic book), where immediately after finishing the adaptation of the movie, the plot moves on to follow Han and Chewie leading five other fighters (including wanna-be Jedi Don Wan Kihotay and green carnivorous rabbit-man Jaxxon) in defense of a small village. And then Godzilla shows up...
• Rawhide Kid: In Rawhide Kid: The Sensational Seven, when Wyatt and Morgan Earp are taken hostage by Cristo Pike and his pack of pistoleros, Rawhide has no choice but to put together a posse of the greatest western heroes in the Marvel Universe - to rescue the Earp brothers and bring Pike to justice. Enter: Kid Colt, Doc Holliday, Annie Oakley, Billy the Kid, Red Wolf and the most overrated gun in the West: the Two-Gun Kid!
  • Later miniseries Blaze of Glory also explores this premise. If you exclude Red Wolf, there are exactly seven main characters helping to defend the quaint town of Wonderment from - would you look at that - a gang of remorseless bandits. Is there an echo in here?
• Seven Soldiers of Victory (2005) is a stealthy example of this plot. Seven heroes, check. Populace periodically ravaged by marauding raiders, check. Heroes working for little or no reward, check. Naïve Newcomer Hero, check. Fraud hero, check. Fraud hero who is redeemed? Check. However, the narrative is so surreal and intentionally fragmented that the reader doesn't really realize the connection until it's Fridge Brilliance.
• Back in the Golden Age Of Comic Books, there was the team known as the Seven Soldiers of Victory, made up of the Crimson Avenger, Shining Knight, the Star-Spangled Kid, Stripesy, and the Golden Age versions of Vigilante (a cowboy-style hero), Green Arrow and Speedy. Together, they fulfilled this role. Later retcons also continued their tales.
• Ben Templesmith's Singularity Seven: Earth is forever changed one dark summer night when tiny alien machines known as nanites drift down from outer space. They transform a normal human into a god-like being known as the Singularity, who drives the remnants of humanity underground and to the brink of extinction. Now Earth's only hope lies in the hands of a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits of "Specials" — humans mysteriously immune to the nanites' destructive power.
• Chris Claremont's Sovereign Seven. The seven in question were aliens, each a prince or princess of his or her homeworld, and each the sole survivor of that world. They banded together to protect the universe (and Earth in particular) from 'the Rapture'; the event that destroyed their homeworlds.

Fan Works

• The Bolt Chronicles: This trope pertains to Bolt and his six puppy mill friends in "The Seven." Lampshaded in that they name themselves after the American movie version and discuss the merits of this film versus its Japanese predecessor.
• Briefly discussed in Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!. Momo laments that her new groups of friends, consisting of Izuku, Tenya, Ochako, and Itsuka, is only a group of five, as they could have branded themselves the Seven Samurai if they had two more people.

Films — Animated

• A Bug's Life is a less serious take on this trope, borrowing heavily from ¡Three Amigos! too. The seven "heroes" are circus performers who think the ant colony wants to entertain their grasshopper guests; when the truth is that they want to be liberated. Also, there are nine of them (Rosie, Heimlich, Gypsy, Manny, Tuck and Roll the pillbugs, Dim, Francis, and Slim).
• Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths involves the six 'core' Leaguers (the same from the series, less Hawkgirl, and with Hal Jordan as Green Lantern) join an alternate universe Luthor to save said alternate universe from evil versions of themselves.
• In My Little Pony: The Movie (2017), seven protagonists flee their invaded capital and recruit seven allies to help them fight back.

Films — Live-Action

• Battle Beyond the Stars is The Magnificent Seven IN SPACE!. In fact Robert Vaughn played essentially the same character that he did in The Magnificent Seven — and even got to recycle some of his dialogue from the earlier movie! The Spanish dub was even titled The Magnificent Seven In Space. In some ways, this movie marks where this trope becomes a Trope and not just retelling.
• Beach of the War Gods, where Jimmy Wang Yu leads a band of warriors to defend a Ming Dynasty coastal village from Japanese pirates. There's even a scene where they train local fishermen to defend themselves from an impending pirate attack.
• Chopper Chicks In Zombietown! (a.k.a. Chrome Hearts). Riding around on their motorbikes, a gang of seven tough women bikers are the only thing that stands between a crowd of Zombies, which have been accidentally let out of their secure cave, and those still alive in the town.
• Russian movie Dikiy vostok a.k.a. The Wild East. In this version of the famous plot, a group of circus midgets decide to form their own community to escape the chaos of the post-apocalyptic wasteland but come under attack from Mongolian motorcycling ruffians. In response, of course, the midgets hire seven tough guys to defend them.
• Dune Warriors: After the end of the world, Earth is a thirsty planet ruled by vicious warlords. One woman is brave enough to fight back; she bands together five warriors to save her town and their precious water.
• Conceivably, the first of The Expendables films works this way. Ragtag group of mercs drive off a corrupt, ex-CIA agent-turned-drug lord and his army from a small island town at the behest of one of the inhabitants... and the CIA, who is paying them under the table for the job, but eh, details, details.
• Arthur and his six Sarmatian knights in King Arthur (2004), with the Britons and the "Woads" as the villagers and the Saxons as the bandits. The scene after the battle of Badon Hill with the graves of the knights who fell is lifted straight from Kurosawa.
• Galaxy Quest, where aliens recruit the cast of a popular science fiction show, not knowing they're just actors.
• Hawk the Slayer is this in a fantasy setting. With a group of adventurers protecting a convent full of nuns from a tyrant demanding gold that they don't have.
• Ironclad, (very) loosely based on the real defence of Rochester Castle against Prince John.
• Kamen Rider Hibiki used this for its Non-Serial Movie, Kamen Rider Hibiki & The Seven Senki. Though only loosely and even with a few twists.
• The 1978 Message from Space, made in Japan, also uses this trope. The Gavanas have conquered the planet Jillucia, whose natives have performed a ritual to send magic seeds into the universe to find heroes. The Jillucian leader then sends out his granddaughter Emeralida and her bodyguard Urocco to find the "Liabe heroes" that the seeds have chosen, and bring them back to defend the Jillucians and defeat the Gavanas.
• In The Revengers, John Benedict recruits six brutal convicts from a Mexican Hellhole Prison to accompany him on his Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• The final act of Saving Private Ryan has an interesting variation of this trope. Upon finding the titular Private Ryan, Captain Miller's surviving Rangers as well as Ryan himself find themselves in the role of the Seven with Ryan's fellow Paratroopers playing the role as the villagers as they are tasked in defending the bridge of Ramelle from approaching Waffen SS. True to form most of the Rangers including Miller himself were killed in the subsequent battle although in a twist the Paratroopers with the exception of Ryan himself are wiped out almost to a man, unlike most depictions of the villagers.
• In the 1979 movie Seven (1979) (not be confused with the 1995 serial killer movie), seven hitmen are hired to kill seven mob bosses who planning a criminal takeover of Hawaii.
• The Seven Magnificent Gladiators is Bruno Mattei's version of the story in a Sword and Sandal setting, and with a screenplay by the guy who made Troll 2. In it, a bandit leader endowed with supernatural powers by his sorceress mother makes yearly raids on a peasant village. However, the women of the village come into possession of a magic sword, and go in search of a hero (Lou Ferrigno) who is able to wield it and save their village from the evil bandit. Naturally, he gathers up six other guys to help him rout the bad guys. After Battle Beyond the Stars, this is the second of this type of movie to feature Sybil Danning.
• The Trope Namers are the Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece Seven Samurai, and its still excellent wild west remake The Magnificent Seven (1960) (which had sequels and a series).
• In Seven Swords, seven warriors come together to protect a village from a diabolical General.
• Seven Warriors, another Hong Kong output from the late 80s. With Lo Lieh as the Big Bad, a Manchurian warlord terrorizing a village, and Adam Cheng, Jacky Cheung, and Tony Leung as members of the seven. The movie is notably Lighter and Softer than most adaptations though, with Tony's character being the Plucky Comic Relief and the onscreen violence downplayed / considerably less gory.
• Six Assassins is Shaw Brothers' take on the concept. The eponymous six are warriors united to take down a tyrant.
• Special Forces revolves around a team of marines infiltrating the fictional Eastern European Republic of Moldavia to rescue a kidnapped American reporter, only to find out the entire country is ruled under the dictatorship of a power-hungry, corrupt General, where the heroes (with the help of a British SAS operative who stayed in Moldavia for his own reasons) ends up overthrowing the General and liberating the country.
• Star Trek: Insurrection: When the crew of the Enterprise learn of a Federation conspiracy against the inhabitants of a unique planet, Captain Picard begins an open rebellion, supported by six members of his bridge crew.
• The 13th Warrior does it with twelve Vikings and an Arab traveler. They have to stop the Wendol, a savage tribe of cannibals who wear bear pelts and attack a small and not well defended Norse kingdom.
• The comedy film ¡Three Amigos!, where the Mexican villagers recruit the heroes of silent westerns, not knowing they're just actors.
• World Gone Wild, starring Bruce Dern, Michael Pare, and Adam Ant, is Seven Samurai set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where water is the most precious commodity on Earth.

Literature

• BIONICLE: Raid on Vulcanus: When a map indicating a planned Bone Hunter attack on Vulcanus is found, Raanu, leader of the village, starts building up defenses to protect his village. Knowing that the Agori can't defend themselves, Gresh travels Bara Magna in search of other Glatorian who are willing to assist in the defense.
• Blood Meridian: This trope is deconstructed in the novel. The Glanton Gang is hired by a Mexican governor whose province has been plagued by Apache raids. The gang will be paid for each scalp they take. However, Glanton and his men are a bunch of violent psychopaths who are just as vicious as the Apaches. They even start taking scalps from Mexican citizens and passing them off as Apache scalps. As a result, the Mexican government turns on them.
• The fifth The Dark Tower book, Wolves of the Calla, by Stephen King. The plot is not only lampshaded but the characters know it's being lampshaded.
• Dragonlance book Middle of Nowhere: The peace of a rural village is shattered by the sudden appearance of a band of renegade warriors seeking slaves. The farmers of Nowhere have no hope unless they can raise a company of champions to defend them, but the motley group of saviors who take up their cause—a shipwrecked sailor, a minotaur poet, a kender treasure hunter, a shamed half-ogre, a disgraced foot soldier, and an eccentric sorcerer—seem nearly as dangerous as the slavemasters.
• The Eaters Of The Dead, the book upon which The 13th Warrior is based, is this nearly beat-for-beat as it retells a demystified Beowulf.
• Margaret Weis' Space Opera The Star of the Guardians eventually had a spin-off, Mag Force 7, about a team of crack mercenaries. Notably, two characters (Xris and Harry Luck) were name-for-name counterparts of the team members they were ripping off, while the other five team members were totally, completely different (such as a drug-using Camp Gay Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass poisoner).
• Parodied and lampshaded out the wazoo in The Magnificent Seven Samurai Cats, one of the component stories of Samurai Cat Goes To The Movies.
• The Maleficent Seven, the Skulduggery Pleasant spin-off novella is a villainous example.
• Robert B. Parker's Spenser novel Potshot fits this perfectly. The town of Potshot asks Spenser to rid them of a gang lead by a man called the Preacher. They agree to pay a healthy sum for the service, so Spenser forms a small private band of mercenaries composed of several associates, most of them criminals or people with criminal backgrounds.

Live-Action TV

• Most of the episodes of The A-Team involve a peaceful, non-violent person, small business or community being menaced by violent thugs of one flavor or another. Since local law enforcement is powerless, useless, non-existent or corrupt, the victim of the week must hire a team of four of the greatest badasses to ever serve in the U.S. Army's special forces.
• The Battlestar Galactica episode "The Magnificent Warriors". After the Cylon's destroy two of the fleet's Agro ships and cripple the last remaining one, Adama hopes to swap an old energizer for seed on the the planet Sectar in Quadrant Zeta. Unfortunately Siress Belloby won't give up the energizer unless the commander courts her. Down on the planet, the inhabitants of the small Agro community of Serenity are looking for a new dispensable constable to hold off the Borays who raid the town each high moon.
• Inverted in The Black Adder episode "The Black Seal" as Edmund gathers the six most evil men in England (plus himself) to take over the kingdom.
• Blake's 7, though the number of main characters varied over the course of the series. Also due to the difficulty of writing for seven characters, it was decided to make the ship's Artificial Intelligence one of the Seven as well.
• The second episode of Dark Matter (2015) features the main characters (of whom there are seven, counting the Android) defending a mining settlement on a colony planet against corporate goons. Showrunner Joseph Mallozzi has listed The Seven Samurai among the series's influences. Interestingly, the protagonists were originally a crew of brutal mercenaries hired as deniable enforcers to destroy the settlement, but changed sides because of Amnesiac Dissonance.
• The "Heart of Gold" episode from Firefly. An interesting twist is that the "Village" to be defended is a whorehouse.
• Kung Fu: The Legend Continues had an episode called "Dragonswing", where Caine and Peter assemble a team of Shao Lin alumni to help a friend rescue his girlfriend from the thugs who've taken over his Northwestern town. Robert Vaughn guest-starred as Rykker, a mercenary very similar to his Magnificent Seven character.
• Obviously, The Magnificent Seven. Seven men from the western United States band together and form the law in a town that, for better or for worse, needs their protection from the lawlessness of the west. They consist of an infamous gunslinger, an ex-bounty hunter, a smooth-talking con artist, a young eastern amateur, a womanizing gunman, a freed slave turned healer, and a former preacher seeking penance.
• Episode 4 of The Mandalorian's first season uses the basic gist of the plot, but with only two "samurai". A village is being attacked by raiders, so Mando and Cara Dune team up to teach the villagers how to defend themselves. And attempt to convince them to move when their scouting mission discovers the marauders have an AT-ST.
• The Merlin episode "The Moment of Truth". Hearing that his village is being threatened by a warlord and his gang, Merlin travels home with Gwen, Morgana and Arthur, the latter doing his best to drill the peaceful villagers into a fighting force.
• Inevitably, The Musketeers did an episode in which the Musketeers return to defend Athos's ancestral home from the neighbouring lord and his lackeys.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode "Angels Revenge". The movie focuses on seven women who decide to fight the local drug cartel after the brother of Michelle Wilson, a Las Vegas pop singer, is found severely beaten.
• The Robin of Sherwood episode "The Swords of Wayland" - at least at first. The plot soon took the outlaws away from the village and in search of the stolen McGuffin.
• Seven Swordsmen TV series. In 1664, the Manchurians conquer the Central Plains and overrun China, establishing the Qing Dynasty. The Qing government issues an order for all pugilists to surrender or face death. Prince Dokado leads the imperial army to eradicate those who defy the order. The imperials kill many pugilists before arriving at Wu village, which houses rebels from the anti-Qing secret organisation Red Spears Society. Two villagers, Han Zhibang and Wu Yuanying, follow Fu Qingzhu to Mount Heaven to seek help from the reclusive swordsmith Shadow-Glow. Shadow-Glow allows his four students (Chu Zhaonan, Yang Yuncong, Xin Longzi and Mulang) to follow the trio on their heroic quest to save the Wulin from persecution. The seven men each receive a magical sword from Shadow-Glow and title themselves "Seven Swords".
• The Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Marauders" (especially given that there are seven main characters in this series) with an alien mining colony being taught to fight against Klingons who are extorting their deuterium fuel.
• Even more obviously, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had "The Magnificent Ferengi". And it is funny as hell! Though technically, there's only six of them and they don't protect a village, they still engage in the classic "building up the team" and having each character be introduced with a particular character archetype, as well as the obvious Shout-Out in the title.
• In Season 5 of The Walking Dead (2010), Rick's competent, battle-hardened group is recruited to join the Alexandria Safe-Zone because the survivors of the community are soft, sheltered, and largely incompetent.

Podcast

• The Blood Crow Stories: Blackchapel centers around the Blackchapel Seven, the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits who stick together in spite of their many grievances. They also classify as The Magnificent Seven Samurai, which is convenient because of their western movie inspirations.

Tabletop Games

• There are at least two instances in the Legend of the Five Rings setting. One is the start of Toku's rise from farmer to general. The other were drawn together by a wandering monk to serve as living examples of Bushido. The Seven Thunders drawn from the Great Clans once a millennium or so to face down the Dark God Fu Leng may or may not fit a similar theme.
• A 1991 article from Roleplayer, the long-defunct GURPS newsletter, covered this trope and its applications to the Tabletop RPG.
• "A Fistful of Dwarfs", an article in the short-lived gaming magazine Visions detailing a "spaghetti Western" area of the Discworld, included this scenario. This being Discworld, of course, the villagers have a cast-iron contract for the warriors to sign, which specifies that warriors who die don't get paid and exempts the villagers themselves from the nastier bits of the movie.
• Second Edition Warhammer included the scenario pack, The Magnificent Sven, which saw Sven, a dwarf paddlesteamer owner, and six assorted compatriots (as well as 12 Norse Berserkers) defend a Lustrian village against renegade Slaan.
• The Fifth Edition Warhammer rulebook included suggestions for a 'Seven Knights' scenario, in which one player took seven Hero Units against an entire army on the other side. The Scenario was twice revived in Sixth Edition in a much harder version. Once for the Storm of Chaos called Seven Sigmarites which is so unbalanced against the seven (due in great part to the relative weakness of the Empire army book's heroes at the time since the Empire was mainly a gunline army) your goal isn't to win, just to kill enough of the oncoming horde. The second scenario features a group of European knights lost deep in the jungle raiding native tombs who are systematically attacked and slain by native defenders(and the local flora and fauna) for the Lustria setting. It's slightly easier due to the plethora of random stuff available to the heroes (they have been grave robbing, and so have access to the Lizardman armory as well) and due to the Rules for Lustria making single characters in a jungle much harder to find and kill.
• Meanwhile in Warhammer 40,000, The Farsight Enclaves supplement for the Tau includes seven special characters that can be taken in place of Farsight's generic bodyguards, each with their own backstory. The fan nickname for them is the Seven Samurai. The book also contains a special scenario similar to the above-mentioned Warhammer ones, where a Tau army consisting of nothing but Farsight and the seven defending an outpost against an endless horde of Tyranids.
• BattleTech: The Grey Death Legion mercenaries performed this way, especially in their early years. They started as an ad hoc militia unit that was thrown together by their founder Greyson Death Carlyle in order to defend the planet from attacking raiders. They did the same thing on a few other planets during their early years, then more or less evolved out of the trope as they recruited more people and became a larger, more powerful force.

Theatre

• Seven Against Thebes is a Greek play that some cite as the inspiration for Seven Samurai, right down to having seven protagonists. Polynices, driven from his kingdom by his brother Eteocles, gathers up a gang of six other leaders in order to take back the kingdom while Eteocles recruits his own group of seven defenders (also chronicled in The Progeny). Both brothers die in the clash, and the ending was rewritten after Aeschylus's death in order to lead into Antigone.

Video Games

• The Greil Mercenaries of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn; it numbered seven members at least initially.
• Kingdom O' Magic: The first quest, "The Magnificent Seven-Eleven Quest", is a straight-up parody of this, as you have to recruit a group of heroes to defend one of the towns from a barbarian horde. Once you do, the horde turns and leaves as soon as they see your heroes, but the town still gets destroyed... by your heroes, in the drunken post-victory celebrations.
• The Western chapter in Live A Live has a few elements of this. An outlaw called the Sundown Kid and his rival, a bounty hunter named Mad Dog, arrive in Success Town, a place terrorized by a group of bandits called the Crazy Bunch, led by O. Dio, the last remaining survivor of the 7th Cavalry. The two decide to team up temporarily and help the town stand up to the bandits. The townsfolk agree to help, and they make a plan to prepare the town's defenses against an attack.
• Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is about Costa Rica recruiting a heroic mercenary group to defend it from mysterious invaders, since it legally can't keep its own defence force.
• The video game Seven Samurai 20XX. Written by Kurosawa's son. The game follows seven samurai as they fight off an immense army of mutants, cyborgs and other inhuman creatures in an attempt to bring about a regime of peace for those in need.
• Throne of Darkness was inspired by the concept. The game is set in Yamato, a medieval version of Japan ruled by the shogun Tsunayoshi and the daimyōs of the four clans. To become immortal, Tsunayoshi transforms himself into the demon Zanshin, the Dark Warlord, who unleashes his army of darkness to conquer Yamato. Zanshin's forces sweep across Yamato one night, catching the clans by surprise and annihilating them. However, believing that the four daimyōs were killed, Zanshin recalls his soldiers prematurely, leaving one daimyō and seven of his retainers alive. As dawn breaks, the daimyō decides to counterattack, ordering his seven surviving samurai to destroy Zanshin and his minions.

Web Animation

• Red vs. Blue: The Chorus Trilogy has a downplayed version of this after the Wham Episodes midway into Season 12 throw off the initial Whole-Plot Reference to Star Wars. The main difference is that here, since the Reds and Blues crashlanded on the planet Chorus during a Civil War, the storyline is less “defending and Training the Peaceful Villagers” and more “getting the two sides of the civil war to perform a successful Enemy Mine against the true masterminds of the conflict". Other than that, it stays surprisingly close to this trope’s general set-up ^note To further clarify, it has Tucker, Carolina, and Epsilon all sharing The Hero role, Wash as The Lancer, Grif and Freckles both as The Big Guy, Simmons and Dr. Emily Grey both as The Smart Guy, Sarge as The Old Guy, Donut and Doc both as The Young Guy, and both Caboose and Lopez as The Funny One. Some of the characters’ roles overlap, though, as an angry Caboose, Wash, and Doc (at least when under the influence of his O’Malley Split Personality) can also be seen as The Big Guy, and Sarge is also increasingly pushed into the role of The Lancer as the arc goes on.

Webcomics

• No Need for Bushido does this and specifically points out that they have seven samurai (if you count Those Two Guys).
• During the "That Which Redeems" Story Arc from Sluggy Freelance, Torg tries to set one of these up after the Dimension of Lame summons/kidnaps him into protecting them from Demonic Invaders. Unfortunately, all the people he recruits come from the Dimension of Lame and ... well, it's called that for a reason.

Western Animation

• Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers had a very deliberate Shout-Out to this in the form of "The Magnificent Kiwi." When you're dealing with a Space Western, this plot's going to show up.
  • Also, according to series creator Robert Mandell, this trope was also the inspiration for the series' entire premise, in the form of Waldo and Zozo contacting Earth to help them defeat the Queen of the Crown and her Evil Empire.
• Name-dropped in the Danger Mouse episode "Ants, Trees and...Whoops-A-Daisy." An ant tribe has captured Penfold and want to perform a sacrifice until DM arrives. But DM defers, saying there's only one of him and lots of the tribe, so what Penfold really needs is the Magnificent Seven.
• Kappa Mikey has an episode where the five crew members are called by a little boy to save their playground from a garbage man intent on turning it into a landfill. The boy is under the impression that they are heroes instead of actors, and the LilyMu crew is under the impression that it's all a publicity gig.
• ReBoot uses this in the post-Time Skip episode "Icons". Matrix and Andraia find themselves in a rundown computer system and have to teach the inhabitants to win games to ensure the system's survival. When Matrix finds that the Tag Along Kid has brought their makeshift team to seven, he utters a sarcastic "magnificent".
• Samurai Jack does this one solo in a jungle-set episode. Jack meets a friendly bunch of high-jumping simians who share food with him, and are then attacked by a rival group of apes. Jack drives them off, and teaches the friendly apes to defend themselves with bamboo staves, in exchange for lessons on how to "jump good."
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars has the episode "Bounty Hunters", featuring Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Ashoka teaming up with the four Titular hunters. It even mentions Kurosawa in the opening.
• Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! has the episode "The Stranded Seven", in which Chiro and the Robot Monkeys find themselves helping a group of cat people fend off mantis monsters known as Mantidons. In this case, the seventh member could very likely be the (broken) Super Robot, established in the previous episode to have a conscience of its own.
• Wakfu's fifth episode does exactly this, down to the title ("The Magnificent Five"). Though, to be honest, it actually is more of a parody of this trope, subverting most plot points common to other examples (the ending, for one).

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