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"Yeah, well, I'm gonna go build my own theme park! With blackjack! And hookers! In fact, forget the park!"
Bender, Futurama

A character or characters are disgruntled with the way a certain organization or group is run, and (usually after getting kicked out) decide that they will not just start their own, but it'll be better than the original. Generally either ends with the new organization actually being better or, alternately, failing miserably as An Aesop about how some things are harder than they look. However it ends up, this trope is what happens when someone is told Let's See YOU Do Better! and actually takes on the challenge.

The Moral Substitute is a Sub-Trope wherein the disgruntlement is (mainly) values-based.

Starting your own with friends or allies (however loose) will often result in an example of We ARE Struggling Together. Compare Renegade Splinter Faction.


Example subpages:

Other examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Ryuusuke and Eiji of BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad initially play in the same band, Serial Mama, until personal differences and a missed opportunity with a record producer drive them apart. Both find success with their respective bands: Eiji's Belle Ame is commercially-successful, backed by influential producer Ran; while Ryuusuke with BECK have a much longer arc of struggles before gaining world-wide recognition.
  • One Case Closed episode, "Computer Murder Case," contains a tragic failed example: The Sympathetic Murderer once worked for the Asshole Victim Corrupt Corporate Executive, before invoking this with a friend. Sadly - their startup was ruined by the victim's monopoly, and the friend was Driven to Suicide. Worse - the murderer had to work for the victim again, now in a lower position, and endure the victim's "The Reason You Suck" Speeches and mockery of the startup and the friend. Understandably, a Rage Breaking Point was reached.
  • Lelouch, the Magnificent Bastard main character of Code Geass, starts the Order of the Black Knights after the existing La Résistance proves its incompetence by getting decimated in a single episode. He later upgrades that into declaring his intent to start a new country. Though in the end he gives up on the idea and switches to taking over the existing one, after the new country is founded. (Without him.) And the new, much more successful, alliance of nations is founded(With him.) Because his old organisation kicked him out. With guns. So, that's twice. Three times?
  • Like the Magic of Stella example below, Sakuragaoka High School in The Demon Girl Next Door has a rather hands-off attitude on the establishment of clubs, as long as the club's objective can be fulfilled in the entire time the applicant is in school. As a result, the school has clubs for black magic, polishing human specimens, drafting anti-zombie manuals, or just playing with cats, while Mikan's proposal of growing tangerines (her namesake) is rejected, since it takes five years for the tree to start bearing fruit.
  • This is the premise of the manga Gothic Sports, where, motivated by the fact that they simply would never see any play in their school's normal soccer team, a few girls (with two guys...) get together and start their own team for the school.
  • In the backstory of Karate Shoukoushi Kohinata Minoru, Kaburagi Ryu karate started when their founder, Kaburagi Juzou, had to leave the already established Koudan Kaikan under undisclosed circumstances (Tachibana, who followed Kaburagi out of Koudan Kaikan, once claimed he was forced out by his former pupil Izumi when he became the Koudan Kaikan president, though Izumi denied the charge and stated Kaburagi should have become president in his place and left on his own).
  • This is implied of the Outdoor Activities Club in Laid-Back Camp. The Outdoor Activities Club was born of Chiaki and Aoi's desire to experience the outdoors at a much more relaxed pace than the athletically-focused Hiking Club.
  • In Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions!, Rikka forms her own school club, the "Far Eastern Magical Nap Association", which is more or less a legalized excuse to let her delusions run amuck with Yuuta, Kumin and Sanae tagging along, willing or not. Nanase-sensei approves the club as a social circle, only because she noticed Rikka's determination to see her dream come to life despite lacking the prerequisite five members. Then it becomes a full-fledged club once Shinka actually applies, hinting to her past life as another deluded teen herself.
  • Hoshi-no-Tsuji High and Middle School in Magic of Stella institutionalizes this trope, as it doesn't require a faculty advisor to start a Japanese School Club; a few student members and the appropriate paperwork already handles it. The series is about a club that make doujin games, which would be unthinkable everywhere else.
  • Kanna from Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid has very little interest in joining any of the established dragon factions due to the war being responsible for her parents' neglect. Instead, she started the "Kanna Faction".
  • Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans: The main characters are Child Soldiers who serve as expendable cannon fodder for a PMC who use "Run away while using the brats as human shields" as Plan A...and Plans B, C, D, etc. Understandably, they have issues with this, so they decide to start their own...by killing off their bosses and taking over their facilities, changing the name from CGS to Tekkadan.
  • One Piece:
    • Z, the Big Bad of One Piece Film: Z was once a member of the Navy, but got so fed up with their corruption that he left and formed his own private army. Problem? His methods are too extreme for even Admiral Sakazuki.
    • In general, whenever a particularly powerful or notorious pirate is taken out of action (usually by death), their subordinates will splinter and form crews of their own; three of the Four Emperors at the start of the story (Whitebeard, Big Mom, and Kaido) all served under Rocks D. Xebec until he was killed by Gold Roger and Monkey D. Garp, Buggy and Shanks were former apprentices of Roger's who struck out after his death, and Arlong led an extremist wing of the former Sun Pirates after Fisher Tiger died.
    • Trafalgar Law was once a member of the Don Quixote Pirates, even being prepared to become Doflamingo's right-hand man on the Heart seat. (Dolfamingo's top Co-Dragons have a Playing Card Motifs). However, after Doflamingo killed the current Corazon, his own brother and Law's favorite person, Law broke away and eventually formed his own crew, the Heart Pirates, so he could eventually take revenge.
    • Earlier still, at the very beginning of the story, Luffy as a young boy begged to be brought along into Shanks's crew. He concludes the opening chapter by declaring to form his own crew instead.
  • After having helped save the world at the end of the Pokémon 2000 movie, the Team Rocket trio have this discussion amongst themselves:
    Jessie: So then we're not bad!
    James: That's good!
    Meowth: But what if the boss finds out?
    James: That's bad.
    Jessie: We'll start our own team!
    James: That's good!
    Meowth: But we got no money!
    James: That's bad.
    Jessie: Then we'll just steal some!
    James: That's good! Or is that bad?
    • Team Rocket also threaten to do this in a later episode, when they find their memberships have expired. It is quickly pointed out they can just reapply.

    Asian Animation 
  • Bread Barbershop: A variant in "Cheese's Playground"; Cheese starts his own playground after bullies don't allow him to play in the public playground and make fun of his stinky odor.

    Comic Books 
  • The Dandy: An old strip had a pair of eliminated wrestling champions who are kicked out for cheating. They decide to start a new wrestling league where everyone is allowed and no one gets eliminated.
  • Daredevil:
    • In Ann Nocenti's final issue of her run, The Kingpin decides that if he can't force newspapers to run or not run the stories he wants, he will start his own media empire.
      Kingpin: What sells newspapers?
      Underling: Crime... Tragedy... Violence...
      Kingpin: Well then, we'll just have to start a war.
    • In the case of the finale of "Guardian Devil", this trope might as well be called "Restart Our Own." While Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson had their issue with Rosalind Sharpe, Foggy's mother, when they joined her law firm, it reached a boiling point when Sharpe decides to leave Foggy (again, her own son) to rot in jail after Mysterio frames him for rape and murder rather than risk any bad PR in an attempt to clear his name, Matt decides right then and there to quit and Foggy naturally decides he wants nothing to do with Sharpe anymore once his name is cleared, so the two opt to restart their own firm, "Nelson and Murdock", at the site of the home of Matt's the Kingpin blew up in Born Again with money that Karen Page left to Matt in her will.
  • Infinity, Inc.: After children and proteges of Justice Society of America members are turned down for JSA membership, the Star Spangled Kid leaves the JSA to bankroll and lead a new team of young heroes, Infinity Inc.
  • Iron Man: This trope seems to be Tony Stark's standard reaction whenever he loses control of Stark International.
  • The Outsiders: When the Justice League of America wouldn't let Batman interfere in international politics by arresting a supervillain dictator, he quit and formed The Outsiders.
    I've had enough of your two-bit Justice League! From now on, these are my new partners!
    Batman and the Outsiders #1
  • The Punisher: In Greg Rucka's 2011 run, the Punisher takes on The Exchange, a bunch of former members of other various criminal organizations in the Marvel universe who decided to start their own organization.
  • Star Wars: In The Deadly Hands of Shon-Ju, The eponymous character is a former Jedi initiate who quit the order after failing the knighthood trials but kept studying the Force. He runs a small order of Force Sensitive students who focus on using the Force to enhance their hands rather than fight with lightsabers. He fights against the Separatists during the Clone Wars, but mostly just to humiliate the Jedi Order in the process.

    Comic Strips 
  • In Calvin and Hobbes, Hobbes departed (or was booted out of) G.R.O.S.S. and formed his own club, C.A.D. (Calvin's A Dope). It was a short-lived schism, since as soon as Susie showed up, Calvin was willing to make up with Hobbes so they could throw rotten apples at her.
    Calvin: That's not a name for a club!
  • A cat hair left Garfield to start his own cat. Upon getting caught by Jon's vacuum cleaner, he complained they hadn't told him about that in business school.

    Fan Works 
  • Better Bones AU: This is how a lot of the Clans formed initially. Tall Shadow broke off and made her own Clan over Clear Sky abandoning Jagged Peak and Thunder Storm, the latter who grew up to form his own Clan, defecting over Tall Shadow's xenophobia driving her to not let Bumble into ShadowClan.
  • In The Fifth Hogwarts House after McGonagall and the rest of the staff refuse to protect Gryffindor from bullying by the rest of the school during the Triwizard Tournament, they decide to start their own House so they can have a different Head.
  • The plot of Glee Reprise is kicked off by Rachel starting her own glee club out of the Kenmore Community Centre down the street from Carmel High after Beth is rejected from Vocal Adrenaline.
  • LadyBugOut is kicked off when Marinette becomes frustrated enough with how Alya has been running her Ladyblog that she decides that Ladybug should start her own blog — one where she can help straighten out some facts while working to better support and protect Paris.
  • In Legacy (Sekiro/Kimetsu no Yaiba), Kiyoshi decides that as a shinobi, the Breath of Thunder doesn't suit him, instead drawing upon its teachings to create a new Breath style, the Breath of Silence.
  • In Harry's Last Stand Against Voldemort Dumbledore refuses to let Harry join the Order of the Phoenix so he decides to start his own order.
  • A major turning point in The New Adventures of Invader Zim comes in Episode 17, when the Tallest tell Zim the truth of his mission and abandon him on Earth. Norlock then channels Zim's rage over this into going rogue, with plans of creating an empire of his own and using it to take revenge.
  • On an Island in the Sun: Harry, tired of the accusations of cheating his way into the Tri-Wizard Tournament, is convinced by Susan and Hannah to start his own island country, which, according to them, is entirely possible if you're powerful enough. The news of this prospective country attracts many people, some of whom are magical creatures who are tired of being victims of Fantastic Racism.
  • Pokémon Reset Bloodlines has this as the backstory for Teams Aqua and Magma. Archie and Maxie used to work for another organization known as Team Zenith, but ended up leaving due to a lot of disagreement and infighting amongst Zenith's members, and founded their own teams in their bid to change the world in their own way.
  • This is what gets the ball rolling in the pro wrestling story, A Ring Of Their Own. Victoria gets fed up with the state of women's wrestling and after conveniently winning $20 million in the lottery, starts her own promotion, the FWF.
  • Since Spider-Man (1967) is well known as a meme generator, one particularly oft-used meme is one where Spider-Man declares that he'll form his own Avengers team. With Ninja Turtles.
  • A benevolent example in the Peggy Sue Series Fic Start Again, where the Phantom Thieves are sent back to the past at different points in time and believe they are the only ones that remember. This leads them to form their own group of Phantom Thieves (respectfully Haru, a non-remembering Makoto, and Akechi; Futaba and Yusuke; Ryuji and Ann) with new Persona users, before coming together at the end of Valor and Discretion.
  • Tarkin's Fist is crewed with officers who were loyal to the idea of the Galactic Empire, but were less than happy with the excesses of Palpatine's regime. Finding themselves lost in the Milky Way with no idea how to return to the Home Galaxy, the leadership of Tarkin's Fist see a prime opportunity to start their own Empire.
  • In this chapter of Harry Potter fanfic "Up Your's Dumbles", Fudge and Umbridge are informed that the Daily Prophet's new major stockholder prohibited them from publishing lies and Umbridge starts thinking it's time the Ministry starts their own newspaper. She hopes the Malfoys will support the idea.
  • In What Are You Doing? (Youth!), the citizens of Konoha pack up and leave (literally, they take the entire village) in response to learning that the Council has forbidden Naruto from becoming Hokage. It isn't until later that Sakura notes that with the stuff they've taken, they can form their own village and make Naruto a Kage.
  • In Your Father, Jack and a number of other cold-based mythological beings, tired of being left out of Christmas parties and such, started celebrating Christmas together a few decades ago.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series uses this as an homage to both the Futurama joke and the Fosters joke.
    Kaiba: C'mon, Mokuba. We're going to have our own tournament. With blackjack. And hookers. In fact, forget the tournament.

    Dartz: We'll have our own evil council, and ours will be much better. And we'll have pizza! Pizza is better than tacos.

    Film — Animated 
  • Metegol: Unable to prevent El Grosso from destroying their town, the townspeople merely start another town elsewhere.
  • Ratatouille: After they lose Gusteau's restaurant due to the health inspector finding out about the rats. Rémy, Linguini, and Colette start up their own small bistro with Ego as a main investor. Judging by the line outside the door as the camera pulls back for the final shot, it seems to be a success.
  • The Super Mario Bros. Movie: Mario and Luigi, after having a "spiky" history with Foreman Spike and his plumbing business, decide to start a plumbing business of their own. This goes awfully for them, as they're too hasty in starting it and not prepared.

    Film — Live-Action 
  • Accepted is about some kids who couldn't get into any college starting their own.
  • In the movie Bring It On Again the main character starts her own cheer squad after having enough with the snobby head cheerleader.
  • CODA (2021): When Ruby and her family finally get fed up with how poorly the fish market treats them and their fellow fishermen, they end up making a miniature market of their own, selling the fish they catch straight off the dock.
  • Hans Gruber from Die Hard. The leader of the terrorist organization he used to belong in even called a TV station to say he no longer works for them. Subverted. He didn't start a new terror cell, but a heist gang.
  • One of the jokes in Euro Trip about the Bratislavan exchange rate involves Scott tossing a small coin to a hotel employee, who then quits and announces that he intends to buy his own fancy hotel with the coin.
  • Jerry Maguire starts off with Jerry becoming disillusioned with the way the sports agency operates and he is subsequently fired. He decides to start his own agency and the rest of the movie follows his struggle to keep the business afloat while still maintaining his new principles.
  • In Little Giants, after linebacker Becky isn't picked to join Coach (and uncle) Kevin O'Shea's football team solely because she's a girl (despite that she's probably the best player at tryouts), she starts her own team, naming her dad (Kevin's brother Danny) as coach. Danny goes along to spite the way his brother has treated him all his life.
  • Lord of the Dance was essentially Michael Flatley's "blackjack and hookers"-attempt after his contract re-negotiations with the Riverdance team broke down.
  • Monty Python's Life of Brian has several subversive groups (Judean People's Front, People's Front of Judea, People's Popular Front, etc). It is implied that some of these came to be by breaking away from each other: the Popular Front apparently consists of one "splitter."
  • In Nixon, the President feels that he can't rely on the FBI or the CIA, so he institutes his own personal covert agency, The White House Plumbers.
  • Of Gods And Warriors is about a Viking princess fighting to reclaim the throne that was denied to her by her uncle. The writer/director had a young daughter, had seen every Disney Princess film More Than Once, and felt moved to make his own princess film. His film is rated 18 note  in the UK, so it will be a while before his daughter can watch it.
  • Paranoia (2013): Wyatt used to work for Goddard before he quit to start his own company.
  • Revenge of the Nerds centers around the titular nerds creating their own fraternity chapter after being rejected by all the existing ones. Of course, being nerds, the only one that will even give them a chance is the historically-black Lambda Lambda Lambda, due to a loophole which requires the frat to give them a trial period to start their own chapter. This does come in handy later on in the movie.
  • Dewey in School of Rock threatens to do this after he's kicked out of his band, then falls into the perfect opportunity when he finds out some of the kids in his class are pretty good musicians.
  • The Big Bad from True Lies started the Crimson Jihad terrorist organisation after he felt that the other terrorist networks he worked for weren't extreme enough for him. His plan involves holding the United States to ransom with nuclear weapons.

    Literature 
  • 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo’s Back Story is not fully revealed in this novel, but He declares he has lost all his family because of The Empire, and the world continued like every other day. A lesser man would be just Maddened Into Misanthropy and cut all ties with society. Captain Nemo starts his own society recruiting men who hate The Empire, training them to build and tripulate the Nautilus, creating their own language, obtaining all his resources from the sea and none from shore, reclaiming the South Pole, financing the Cretan rebellion and converting themselves into a N.G.O. Superpower.
    "if I can trust my hunches, if I truly understand the captain's way of life, his Nautilus isn't simply a ship. It's meant to be a refuge for people like its commander, people who have severed all ties with the shore."
  • When The Babysitters Club put Mallory through a ridiculous series of training exercises in order to make her prove herself worthy of joining, she calls them out on their crap and starts her own club with her new best friend Jessi. It doesn't last, since the sitters eventually figure out that they were in fact acting like bitches and invite both girls to join the club.
  • Parodied in Discworld with the Church of Om, formerly an imperialistic theocracy that has since descended into a schism every other week. Nailing one's theses to a church door is now the standard method of disagreeing with doctrine, to the point that there are waiting lists to do so.
  • In, Haganai, Yozora starts the Neighbors Club as a club where people without friends could learn to make friends. Unfortunately, because Loners Are Freaks, the only people they get are other weirdos, and they more or less end up Lonely Together.
  • Background material in the Harry Potter franchise reveals that the Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in North America was founded by a witch who really wanted to attend Hogwarts but was prevented from doing it by her Evil Aunt. In an unintentional "screw you" to her supremacist aunt, who despised Hogwarts for allowing Muggle-born wizards and witches to attend, Ilvermorny was founded by the girl with the help of her Muggle (well, No-Maj since he's American) husband and their adopted sons. Thus, Ilvermorny became even more democratic than Hogwarts ever was, accepting wizards and witches regardless of their origin.
  • This is Haruhi's motivation for starting the SOS Brigade in Haruhi Suzumiya after she joins every single club at the school and quits after she gets bored. This is also the direct cause of the plot in The Boredom of Haruhi Suzumiya.
  • In Erwin Strauss's out-of-print book How To Start Your Own Country, he details how to start your own country.
  • We have this trope to thank for both The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia. J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, good friends in college and both big fans of classic mythology, both became frustrated that no one was writing those kinds of stories anymore. Finally they both agreed that they should write those stories themselves.
  • In Paradise Lost, when all the demons are debating what to do next, Belial suggests that they could just apologize. Mammon, being the Jerkass that he is, shoots that down, and then suggests that they make their own heaven, although blackjack and hookers aren't mentioned (but you know it would have them).
  • The Pillars of Reality: Teenaged Mage Alain and teenaged mechanic Mari start the New Dawn to defy their former guilds and give dissidents from the guilds and unaffiliated commoners a new place to go.
  • In Jean Merrill's The Toothpaste Millionaire, sixth-grader Rufus Mayflower responds to the high cost of store-bought toothpaste by starting his own toothpaste company with the help of his best friend.
  • Happens a couple times in Warrior Cats:
    • Some remnants of BloodClan decide to make their own Clan... in Ravenpaw and Barley's barn.
    • Sol, some time after parting ways with SkyClan, attempts to form his own group in an abandoned Twoleg nest.
  • In the present setting of The Wheel of Time, the Aiel are a race of feared and powerful warriors, expert in violence and hardened with honor. The original Aiel were a group of magically-inclined servants of the Aes Sedai sworn to non-violence. Eventually, years of living as constantly harassed nomadic pacifists drove four of their number to commit Accidental Murder to rescue their sisters from being enslaved by brigands. Their elders exiled the survivors of that mission, but their leader still insisted that in spite of unintentionally violating one of their most sacred oaths, that he and his companions were "still Aiel." The group, continuing to refer to proclaim themselves as Aiel, attracted more and more people from their original tribe to join them, as the prospect of being allowed to protect themselves was an appealing alternative to being killed, kidnapped, eaten, or raped. Eventually, their numbers got to the point that the "exiles" could sustain communities of their own while their progenitors continued to dwindle in number. In addition, their growing reputation as fierce fighters, determined hunters, and eerie assassins gave these new Aiel a much grander reputation than the originals, eclipsing their forefathers entirely as "the" Aiel. To their credit, these successors never stopped trying to look out for those that cast them out, helping them when asked until they went extinct and maintaining peaceful relations with a similar splinter group: the Tuatha'an aka "The Tinkerers".

    Live-Action TV 
  • Fayed from 24 season 5 formed his own terror group when his superior Assad decided to start peaceful negotiations with the West.
  • Angel: In season 4, Wesley, having been cast out of Angel Investigations, is shown to have formed his own operation with a new gang. There's no mention of what happened to this gang after Wesley is accepted back.
  • An episode of Are You Being Served? had the regular staff getting into a disagreement with the cafeteria staff. The cafeteria staff walks out and the regular staff are determined to do a better job than the cafeteria staff. They do - but only by sneaking out and getting expensive take-out food. Realizing that they were working extra-hard and spending themselves into a hole, they gave in and apologized.
  • In Arrow, Damien Darhk's rivalry with Ra's al Ghul results in him leaving the League of Assassins and forming H.I.V.E. Talia al Ghul also forms her own unnamed all-female cult. Later on, after the League is disbanded, it's revealed that Malcolm Merlyn created the Thanatos Guild out of the former members of the League still loyal to him.
  • At the end of season four of Babylon 5, Earth demand that Sheridan resign from his political post, due to his role in rebelling against the Earth government. He willingly does so and is immediately made President of the new Alliance.
  • In The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon does this just about any time he doesn't get his way. When his friends kick him out of their team for a science competition, he starts a new "team" (consisting of just himself). When they kick him out of their mobile app venture, he tries creating an app for Penny instead. When he fails to obtain a ticket to Comic-Con, he decides to start his own comic book convention. And so on...
  • In Boardwalk Empire, after being snubbed in a deal, Gyp Rosetti takes over the strategic chokepoint of Tabor Heights to force Nucky into selling him liquor directly rather than have Arnold Rothstein acting as a middle man. Gyp soon recognizes the potential to supplant Nucky as Rothstein's main supplier and expand to the rest of New York and starts his own smuggling operation from there.
  • Boston Legal: Jerry Espenson, a former associate of Crane, Poole and Schmidt, started his own practice after being fired for his reaction about not being named a partner. Despite having a good success, he decided to return to his former employers and was eventually named a partner.
  • In one episode of Boy Meets World, Eric decides to start his own fraternity after getting fed up with the hazing of the official fraternities. Unfortunately for him, the dean catches on.
  • Pretty much the overarching plot of the short-lived Wall Street drama Bull (not to be confused with the court drama Bull): A group of young turks break away from the stockbroking firm they work for and make their own. It's not always smooth sailing, of course, which provides the drama of the series.
  • Caça Talentos: This Brazilian show featured a talent agency named "Caça Talentos" (It can be translated to either "Talent Hunter" or "Talent Chaser") that was facing hard times. Silvana Carloff, who owned 30% percent of the agency, was pressuring the major shareholder into selling it. One of her efforts consisted of starting her own talent agency to compete against his. "Caça Talentos" itself is another example since its founder started it in protest against his former boss' policies at Mundo Real Produções Artísticas.
  • Sam on Cheers almost did this at the start of season eight, planning to buy an abandoned bar after getting fed up with Rebecca's bossiness. Robin Colcord talks him out of it, though, and steers him on the path he really wants: buying Cheers itself.
  • At the end of season 4 of Chuck Chuck gets fired from the CIA and decides to start his own spy agency.
  • An episode of Frasier had this happen with Frasier and Niles's wine club. Frasier is tapped to become the head, or "Corkmaster," of the group, only for Niles to run against him in an election. This naturally leads to fighting and arguing, at which point Martin comes down and reminds his sons that they used to do the same thing when playing as children. After he humiliates them in front of their friends ("Are you gonna let your brother play?"), Frasier and Niles decide to start their own wine society.
  • Friends: Monica inherits a fancy dollhouse from her late aunt and invites Phoebe (who never had a dollhouse as a kid) to come play with it together. When Phoebe makes suggestions like adding a ghost and a giant dog Monica is uncomfortable and asks Phoebe to stop. Phoebe responds by building her own dollhouse with quirky details like a slide, an aromatherapy room and a bubble machine. Monica is left sulking as Ross and Rachel coo over Phoebe's dollhouse.
  • One episode of Get Smart dealt with ACB, the third spy network (with KAOS and CONTROL). They were founded by a KAOS agent who got passed over for promotion too often. He first tried to defect to CONTROL, who didn't want anything to do with him. This led him to starting his own group, and the episode revolves around Max and Siegfried having to team up to stop him.
  • In Glee, Sugar Motta has her rich father fund a second Glee Club within the same school after New Directions refuses to let her join. It doesn't change the fact that she can't sing to save her life.
  • The basis for several episodes of The Goodies, including "Radio Goodies" and "Hospital for Hire".
    • When Tim has Bill and Graham drummed out of the Scouts, they threaten to start a Scout group of their own, in this case an outlaw Scout gang that causes the Scouts to be banned outright as a subversive organisation.
  • In season 4 of The Good Wife, all the fourth year associates are denied a previously promised partnership. They fake poaching clients for a while, hoping to scare the partners enough to get their promotion, but only manage to get Alicia promoted. Ultimately Cary, Alicia, and the fourth year associates successfully found Florrick, Agos, and Associates.
  • On How I Met Your Mother Barney and Ted always wanted to start their own bar called Puzzles. On New Year's Eve 2011 they are outraged by the high cover charge at their usual bar and jokingly suggest that they should just start their own bar in Ted's apartment. The idea takes off and news of the bar goes viral. However, as more and more people show up, the party turns rowdy. As their costs due to damages and other expenses rise, they have to keep raising their prices until they are almost the same as the real bar and everyone leaves. Also they don't actually have a liquor license.
    • After Ted is fired from his company, he decides to start his own architectural firm. Unfortunately, it failed.
  • A common trope for the gang in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Among many examples, they started their own band after seeing Dee's ambiguously retarded boyfriend being a hit rapper. They also wanted to launch their own gasoline preservation to make money for the bar. Charlie at some point, writes and directs his own musical. The list just goes on and on, including a desire to start their own police force, clothing line, Dennis running for comptroller, an all-age drinking bar, their own radio station, and so forth... it usually all descends into We ARE Struggling Together category.
  • In a Kenan & Kel episode, Kenan is told he is too young to get into a dance club, so he starts his own club at Rigby's.
  • Kickin' It: Jack and Jerry were once in charge of Rudy's dojo. When Jack decided to ignore Jerry's ideas, Jerry opened his own dojo at Falafel Phil's. Also, Phil inspired Jerry by telling about his cousin, who used to work with Phil but decided to start his own because Phil refused to use real meat in the food he sold.
  • In Legends of Tomorrow, after discovering that the Time Masters are working with Vandal Savage, Rip Hunter, a former Time Master, and the Legends destroy the organization. Sometime later, Rip decides to create another organization, dedicated to policing Time Travel — the Time Bureau. Unlike the Crystal Spires and Togas nature of the Time Masters, the Time Bureau is based in present day and wears generic black suits. The Bureau's technology is also nowhere near the level of the Time Masters.
  • This is what happens at the end of season three of Mad Men when Sterling Cooper becomes Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, in order for the partners to avoid yet another merger.
  • The premise of The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers is that a boy named Evan gets cut from the hyper-competitive Ducks, so his mother decides to start a new hockey team to return to the idea of children playing for fun rather than to always win.
  • Mosley. After a speech denouncing the British government's inept response to the Great Depression, several other politicians offer an alliance with Oswald Mosley. However he prefers to form his own splinter party, which fails to gain the votes after he's laid up with flu during the election, unable to sway the populace with his legendary charisma. After this Mosley becomes increasingly ostracized from mainstream political life as his new party turns fascist.
  • A Story Arc of The Office (US) focused on Michael Scott quitting Dunder-Mifflin to start the Michael Scott Paper Company. By the second episode of the arc he was at it again: "I should leave them and start my own paper company. That'll show them." Either he's in some sort of feedback loop or it's a writer's lampshade.
  • At the beginning of Outsourced, Todd Dempsy considered starting his own novelties company rather than being transferred to India. All his boss did to make him accept going to India was remind him of a debt.
  • Pair of Kings: Unhappy on how Brady was running Kinkow's Junga Ball team, Boomer started his own.
  • The Practice: After Lindsay Dole's murder conviction had been overturned, she decided to start her own legal practice instead of resume her work at Donnell, Young, Dole and Frutt. Later on, Bobby Donnell left the firm to start another practice and the firm was renamed Young, Frutt and Berlutti. Later on, when Alan Shore and Sally Heep were fired from Young, Frutt and Berlutti, Sally suggested to Alan the idea of starting their own practice but he rejected the idea. After Alan's successful lawsuit for wrongful termination of employment, Jimmy left the firm to start a new practice.
  • Princess Princess D: This live-action version of the manga Princess Princess featured a group of boys that, not satisfied with their all-boys school's "Princesses", started their own group of "Princesses" known as "Dark princesses".
  • In one episode of The Red Green Show, some of the lodge members are so unhappy with Red's leadership at Possum Lodge that they decide to abandon him and form a lodge of their own, the Salamander Lodge. They even try to lure Red's nephew Harold into joining by offering him a digital editing suite. Fortunately for Red, that lodge doesn't last too long when they learn of its rules and regulations, and by episode's end, they all decide to return to Possum Lodge instead.
  • In the fourth Season Finale of Scorpion, the team has a big blow-up, leading to Paige, Sylvester, Toby and Happy leaving Scorpion and starting their own firm, Centipede Partners.
  • In Scrubs when the Janitor teaches Ted to be less of an Extreme Doormat and stand up for himself, Ted disagrees with how the Janitor is running the Brain Trust and starts his own group called The Brain Bunch.
  • Sesame Street: Big Bird formed his own Birdketeer club when Oscar denied him admission to his Grouchketeer club because he's too nice.
  • Smallville episode "Pandora" has Future Chloe take Lois to Watchtower. She responds with this line:
    Lois: Hey, Chloe? Remember when we were ten and I kicked you out of my clubhouse for spilling soda and you said you'd just build a cooler one? You win.
    • Also, at the end of Season 1, when Lionel Luthor decided to shut down Luthorcorp's fertilizer plant in Smallville, Lex started Lexcorp in retaliation. Then it was revealed Lionel had planned all along to give Lex a little taste of independence before taking everything from him.
  • An episode of Smart Guy had these sentiments. When the cost of a type of soda went up to over a dollar, T.J. began to create and sell his own soda for 30 cents.
  • In an episode of The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, when London and Barbara did not make the cheerleading squad at their high school, they decided to create their own squad, consisting of themselves, Cody, Nia, and two other rejects: Leslie and Haley.
  • Nikos Karabastos, from Brazilian soap opera Uga Uga, used to work at a toy factory until he decided to start his own and eventually became wealthier than his former employers.
  • What I Like About You: In the second episode of season 2, Val grows tired of the lack of appreciation and sexist environment of her public relations firm. After encouraging the wife of one of their clients to do a tell-all book about his numerous infidelities, Val decides to quit and start a public relations firm of her own.
  • In Young Indiana Jones and the Phantom Train of Doom, Indy encounters a British army unit composed entirely of Old Soldier types. When Indy asks how the unit came to be, one soldier invokes this trope almost word for word, stating that none of the regular British army units wanted them, so they formed their own.
  • Yo Gabba Gabba!: In "Clubhouse", Muno and Brobee build their own clubhouse but refuse to let Foofa and Toodee join, so the girls decide to build their own clubhouse with Plex's help where everyone is invited. Eventually, Muno and Brobee grow bored of their clubhouse and apologize to the girls, who happily give them admission to their clubhouse.
  • The second season of Young Rock ends with Dwayne losing the presidential election in 2032. The third season has him performing a political deal for the man he lost to. The season ends with him realizing that he shouldn't get out of politics and deciding to start his own country.
  • Young Sheldon: In "Legalese and a Whole Hoo-Ha", Sheldon is tired of having Hagemeyer, Linkletter, and his parents fighting over the contract for the database project, and so he decides to just work on it alone using private funding.
  • Logan starts his own secret society in Zoey 101, after not being selected for the Silver Hammers.

    Music 
  • The entire DIY music-making ethic is based upon this trope. Musicians and bands who don't agree with the way major labels run the music industry will instead start their own labels and release their own records.
    • Comedy rapper Devo Spice started the label FIDIM Interactive, "FIDIM" standing for "Fine, I'll Do It Myself".
  • After being fired from Heavy Mithril Science Fantasy band Gloryhammer in 2021, vocalist Thomas Winkler (Angus McFife) has since started his own similar group, Angus McSix.
  • Michael Amott formed Arch Enemy a year after his departure from Carcass.
  • Two groups grew out of the short-lived super group Azteca: After creative differences, founder and former Santana guitarist Neal Schon would break away and form the band Journey, while bassist and former Sly & The Family Stone member Larry Graham took what was left of Azteca and formed Graham Central Station.
  • Jake E. Lee formed the Blues Rock band Badlands after being fired from Ozzy Osbourne's band.
  • Although Kim Deal formed The Breeders while she was still in The Pixies, a major reason the band was started was that she didn't get to sing and/or write enough songs in her main band. They were also able to lure Tanya Donelly away from Throwing Muses, making this a Spin-Off of two different bands...
    • Then Donelly herself left The Breeders to form Belly meaning The Breeders were both the result and the start of this trope.
  • Dan Lilker did this with Brutal Truth after being booted out of Anthrax.
  • After leaving After Forever due to Creative Differences, Mark Jansen formed Epica.
  • Two examples come from the Power Metal band Helloween. The first being Kai Hansen's band Gamma Ray, formed after he got fed up with Michael Kiske and quit, the second being Masterplan, a band formed by Uli Kusch and Roland Grapow after being kicked out of Helloween for trying to take the band in a Darker and Edgier direction.
    • In turn we have an example from Gamma Ray. The original frontman, Ralf Scheepers, went on to form Primal Fear.
  • Girlschool started like this.
    Kim McAuliffe: The reason we were all girls was we couldn’t find any blokes who wanted to play with us! This was the natural thing to do.
  • Erik Rutan formed Hate Eternal following his first departure from Morbid Angel.
  • In 1968, Motown's star production team, Brian & Eddie Holland and Lamont Dozier, got into a financial dispute with Berry Gordy and when he didn't budge, left to form their own record label, Invictus/Hot Wax.
  • Vocalists Tyler Carter and Michael Bohn were fired from Woe, Is Me in 2011 due to Creative Differences. In response, they founded Issues the next year, which quickly became bigger than Woe, Is Me ever was.
  • Kids Praise: An in-universe example: in the Baseball Episode (album number 8), two of the Kids Praise kids try out for a baseball team called The Bulldogs, but don't make the team. When they tell Psalty their woes, Psalty's answer is to start his own baseball team, called The Psalters.
  • Killswitch Engage was formed following the demise of Overcast and Aftershock. Mike D'Antonio and Adam Dutkiewicz had plenty of musical ideas kicking around in spite of their mutual lack of functioning bands to make those ideas happen. This led to the birth of the former.
  • After Lostprophets lead singer Ian Watkins was arrested on child molestation charges in 2013, the rest of the band departed and formed No Devotion with Thursday frontman Geoff Rickly.
  • After parting ways with Vio-lence in 1992, guitarist Robb Flynn formed Groove Metal band Machine Head.
  • After being fired from Metallica prior to the release of Kill 'Em All, Dave Mustaine formed Megadeth.
  • Following the release of Dying Fetus' album Destroy the Opposition, every band member except John Gallagher departed and formed Misery Index.
  • Heavy Metal band Motörhead was formed when Lemmy Kilmister was given the boot from space rockers Hawkwind.
  • Ozzy Osbourne started his own band after Black Sabbath gave him the boot. His work there solidified him as a rock god. His replacement, Ronnie James Dio did the same thing.
  • Four out of six members of the original lineup of Swedish Horrible History Power Metal band Sabaton left to form the very similarnote  Civil War after recording Carolus Rex in 2012, citing fatigue with Sabaton's touring schedule and a desire to have more of a role in songwriting. Sabaton frontman Joakim Brodén says they're still friends but admits things were tense at the time.
  • When Rob Zombie was working on movies instead of writing music and touring, his guitarist Riggs and drummer Tempesta got tired of waiting on him and his band to start their own band, Scum of the Earth.
  • The original Cannibal Corpse singer, Chris Barnes, started Six Feet Under in 1993 to do a more groovy style of death metal, and made it his full time job after he left his other band due to Creative Differences.
  • Following a huge family crisis, Max Cavalera parted ways with Sepultura and formed Soulfly. The fans remained loyal with the latter.
  • Original Weezer bassist Matt Sharp started the Rentals out of a desire to do his own take on early New Wave rock, and made it his full time job after butting heads with Rivers Cuomo. However, there couldn't have been too much animosity; Rivers co-wrote "My Head Is In The Sun" for Seven More Minutes, the first Rentals album to be released after Matt Sharp left Weezer.
    • Jason Cropper became The Pete Best of the group, departing over band friction about his girlfriend's pregnancy before The Blue Album was completed, and formed a similarly Power Pop-influenced band called Chopper One.

    Pro Gaming 
  • Dota 2: Team Secret was founded after The International 2014 with the help of legendary now-former Natus Vincere captain/support Clement "Puppey" Ivanov, and had also brought together his teammate and support partner Kuro Salehi "KuroKy" Takhasomi, midlaner Gustav "s4" Magnusson, and former Fnatic support duo Johan "BigDaddyN0tail" Sundstein and Tal "Fly" Aizik. However, months after this formation, Fly and N0tail would soon depart/be kicked(?) from the roster, with Evil Geniuses's Artour "Arteezy" Babaev and Ludwig "zai" Wahlberg taking their places. The team was dubbed as quite possibly the most start-studded roster ever built leading up to The International 2015, having also won 4 LAN's to prove their status as favorites. But with this much talent, there was also a problem of egos clashing despite their success. At The International 2015, this became part of the reason why they were sent home in 7th-8th, a solid, yet extremely disappointing finish for a team of their caliber.
    • At the post-TI5 shuffle, Puppey was the only remaining member left on the squad, with KuroKy leaving to form his own 5-man team, to eventually be signed by NA/EU organization Team Liquid, s4 returning to Alliance, and Arteezy and zai returning to Evil Geniuses. Puppey's new roster included the unpredictable yet talented Jacky "EternaLEnVy" Mao and his longtime partner Johan "pieliedie" Astrom, talented Romanian midlaner Aliwi "w33" Omar, and Danish veteran Rasmus Berth "MiSeRy" Filipsen. The team, like the previous iteration, was loaded with talent. They finished 2nd at The Frankfurt Major and 1st at The Shanghai Major. But like before, problems started to arise.
    • Before The Manila Major, w33 and MiSeRy were kicked out of Team Secret, with Arteezy once again coming in, this time taking Saahil "Universe" Arora with him. The ensuing Major saw them get eliminated in the first round of the Lower Bracket stage. This was more than enough for Universe to leave the team and rejoin EG. Sam "BuLba" Sosale would take his place. At TI6, they would be eliminated in the first round once again.
    • It was at this point that reports arose that Secret had not been paying some of their players (and manager) the money they earned from the tournaments they participated in along with their merchandise sold under the Team Secret banner. Including this is the organization's manager and Puppey himself taking a paycut from the winnings earned. There were also reports of bullying within the team. Eventually a TwitLonger from Puppey was released, stating that all financial obligations were now met, and that the team's manager was then let go and hired a new manager.
    • After TI6, the only player who remained not named Puppey was pieliedie. Taking their places would be former MVP Phoenix teammates Lee "Forev" Sang-don and Pyo "MP" No-a, and Fnatic midlaner Yeik "MidOne" Nai Zheng. Forev didn't stay long, returning to MVP just nearly three months into his tenure, with Maurice "KheZu" Gutmann coming in, and in May 2017, pieliedie would also leave to join his old teammates in Team NP, and Yazied "YapzOr" Jaradat would take his place. This iteration would have inconsistent success throughout the season, with their lowest point being a 9th-16th finish at The Kiev Major, upset by Brazil's SG e-sports. At TI7, they would fall 9th-12th courtesy of eventual champions Team Liquid.
    • The roster shuffle pre-Dota Pro Circuit 2017-18 had MP and KheZu leaving the team, and in their place were Marcus "Ace" Hoelgaard, and Adrian "Fata" Trinks. They had mixed success all throughout, but their 2nd place finish at ESL One Hamburg and wins at Dreamleague Seasons 8 and 9 gave them the majority of the points to qualify for TI8, finishing 4th in the DPC standings. At the tournament itself, they improved...albeit marginally, finishing 5th-6th, once again at the hands of Team Liquid.
    • Post-TI8 and into the 2018-19 DPC, Ace and Fata would leave to reform Ninjas in Pyjamas's Dota 2 squad as part of Peter "ppd" Dager's 5-stack, paving the way for Secret to sign Michal "Nisha" Jankowski and the return of zai to the lineup. Already they look unstoppable against many other teams as shown in The Kuala Lumpur Major, only beaten by Virtus.pro in the Grand Finals 3-2, and have dominated in the Chongqing Major EU Qualifiers, taking the 1st seed once again. However, time will tell if they can continue this momentum heading into TI9.
    • Over the course of the organization's existence, the team's went through many shifts and ups and downs. Eventually, it went from a team desiring to create an all-star team to a team focused on building around a certain player, in this case Puppey himself, as he also takes a role in building some of the younger players with huge potential, like Nisha and YapzOr. Over time the organization has also decided to sign players in other pro games such as Rocket League, Fortnite, and Rainbow Six: Siege. The organization as a whole has shied away from controversy since the one that impacted them in late 2016, and has become better since.
  • Dota 2: OG was founded after The International 2015 mainly through the efforts of best friends N0tail and Fly, along with former Team Secret manager Evany Chang. Their other three founding members and teammates were Fly's compLexity Gaming teammate David "MoonMeander" Tan, Andreas Franck "Cr1t-" Nielsen, and Amer "Miracle-" al-Barqawi. Initially starting off as (monkey) Business, they rebranded to OG prior to The Frankfurt Major.
    • At Frankfurt, they were unsuccessful in the group stage, resulting in them starting off in the Lower Bracket. And then they performed what is arguably the greatest Lower Bracket run of all time, defeating Fnatic, Mineski, Virtus.pro, TI5 runner-up CDEC Gaming, EHOME (who also had started from the Lower Bracket as well), and TI5 champions Evil Geniuses to face off in a grudge match against Team Secret, and capped off their unbelievable run winning 3-1 against them.
    • The Shanghai Major...did not fare well for OG, finishing 7th-8th after losing to Fnatic, but the roster held strong, bouncing back at The Manila Major and taking their second Major title, defeating Team Liquid 3-1. With two Major wins under their belt, along with Miracle- becoming the first player to reach 9000 MMR, they were the absolute shoe-ins to win TI6.
    • You all know what happened next. After dominating the group stages, they would go on to lose 2-1 to MVP Phoenix, and then get knocked out 2-0 by TNC Pro Team. Unlike what happened after Shanghai, the team couldn't stick together after their disastrous and embarrassing loss at TI. Only Fly and N0tail stuck together, with Cr1t- moving on to Evil Geniuses, MoonMeander going to Digital Chaos, and Miracle- leaving to go to Team Liquid. In their place were s4, Jesse "JerAx" Vainikka, and Anathan "ana" Pham. This OG would go on to win two more Majors in Boston and Kiev, making Fly and N0tail 4-time Major winners, the most of anyone. But at TI, they just couldn't perform well to the hype, as while they got revenge on TNC, they would then be eliminated by LGD Gaming, finishing 7th-8th.
    • ana leaves the team, and Roman "Resolut1on-" Fominok would be the team's new midlaner. This time, however, they lost their form during the 2017-18 DPC, only managing to gain a Minor win at MDL Macau. By March 2018, Reso left the team, resulting in coach Sebastien "7ckngMad" Debs standing in until they could find a new midlaner. It wouldn't come. And then Fly and s4 would leave OG for EG, just mere days before the China Dota2 Supermajor.
    • Not to mince words, but the sudden departure of the two utterly broke the rest of OG, especially for N0tail, who had a really close bond with Fly. As a result, OG withdrew their invite for the Supermajor, and had to look for players to fill in their roster for the impending arrival of TI8. N0tail found their midlaner in Topias "Topson" Taavitsainen, and ana returned to the team. With the team having reformed just for the sake of making it to TI8, not many, if there were any, had them making a deep run.
    • You all know what happened next. After dominating the EU Qualifiers, they managed to do well in the group stage with a 9-7 standing, enough for a spot in the Upper Bracket, where they faced off and defeated VGJ.Storm. Then came Evil Geniuses, and OG won it out after an amazing comeback performance in Game 3. Then they went up against PSG.LGD...and made another phenomenal comeback in Game 3, punching their ticket to the Grand Finals. PSG.LGD would sweep EG for another shot at OG. What then followed was an epic 5-game series that was highlighted by OG's comeback performance in Game 4. OG would go on to win Game 5 and The International, breaking the East-West cycle.
    • By this point, OG has arguably become the most successful Dota 2 team of all time, having won 4 Majors and a TI, and so far, they are the only ones to have won a TI and more than one Major (the only other team having won a TI and a Major is Team Liquid). The team has gone through huge success in the 4 Major wins and the downs of TI6 and TI7, but now they have won The International. The only team who can be able to surpass that level of success is Virtus.pro if they can win TI9 (what's even more amazing if they do so is the fact that the current VP roster (except for RodjER as he had joined them in February 2018) had stayed together for two years and counting).
  • CS:GO: From the ashes of what was once Team SoloMid/Questionmark, Astralis was formed on January 18, 2016, consisting of an all-Danish roster of Nicolai "dev1ce" Reedtz, Peter "dupreeh" Rasmussen, Andreas "Xyp9x" Højsleth, René "cajunb" Borg, and Finn "karrigan" Andersen, once they were able to obtain the rights to the Astralis name from the original founders of the 1.6 Finnish team.
    • Their first year had a very mixed bag of results, with a 3rd-4th place finish at the MLG Columbus Major and a 5th-8th finish at the ESL One Cologne 2016 Major. Unfortunately, even with their newly created organization, they still couldn't surpass the demons that had plagued them over the past few years, which was their inability to make it to a Major Final, due to their tendency to choke. Ultimately, it wasn't skill-related, but more of a mentality issue. Over the course of the year, cajunb would go to Team Dignitas in exchange for Markus "Kjaerbye" Kjaerbye, and with karrigan acquired by FaZe Clan, they would acquire their new in-game leader in Lukas gla1ve Rossander. Following that, they made the pioneering decision to hire a sports psychologist to help improve their mental game. And like that, their results skyrocketed. They would finish 2016 with a 2nd place finish against OpTic Gaming in ELEAGUE Season 2, and a 1st place finish against OpTic once again at the ECS Season 2 Finals.
    • 2017 started off on a high note for the Danes, as they would win the first LAN of the year: the ELEAGUE Major: Atlanta 2017 against Virtus.pro. They followed that up with a win at IEM Season XI World Championship against FaZe. Unfortunately, over the course of the year, dev1ce had been sidelined with a hiatal hernia that kept him out for most of the year, but even with him back in time for the PGL Major Krakow 2017, they just could not defend their Major title against a surging Danylo "Zeus" Tslenko-led Gambit Esports, who would go on to win the Major after defeating fellow dark horses Immortals. With dev1ce sidelined, it led to another mixed year, ending on a subpar note with a 9th-10th finish at the ESL Pro League Season 6 Finals.
    • Astralis would start 2018 in terrible fashion, with an early elimination at the ELEAGUE Major: Boston 2018 courtesy of eventual champions Cloud9, finishing 12th-14th. And in sudden fashion, Kjaerbye left the team in February to join North. The Danes were scrambling to quickly sign their fifth player, and in time came Emil "Magisk" Reif.
    • What no one could've predicted was the start of yet another dominant era. Starting off in a dominant win at Dreamhack Masters Marseille 2018, it began their rise to the top (and the Intel Grand Slam). They would truly cement their era with their ascendant run at the FACEIT Major: London 2018 with only two map losses throughout their entire run from the New Challengers Stage (in lieu of their early group stage elimination at the previous Major in Boston) all the way to the bracket stage, where they dominated every single team in their path, becoming the latest team to win multiple Majors. And at the ESL Pro League S8 Finals, they would win against Team Liquid, and as a result, the first ever Intel Grand Slam title.
    • 12 Grand Finals appearances. 10 trophies. Major Champions. Grand Slam winners. The overall #1 team in the world. 31-0 on Nuke over the course of nine months (February-December). Summed up, everyone was just a witness to Danish dominance in 2018.

    Pro Wrestling 
  • Lou Thesz famously created the NWA World International Championship belt with the long term goal of losing it to Rikidozan since it was clear a JWA bid for the World Heavyweight Champion belt would fail but Thesz wanted to keep his program in Japan going, since it was the most profitable of his career. This has also happened with other title belts, such as World Wrestling Associates creating a belt for Freddie Blassie when the rest of the NWA ignored his defeat of Édouard Carpentier, Ted DiBiase (Sr.) creating the Million Dollar Belt, Taz creating the FTW Title, Poison Sawada Black creating the Ironman Heavymetalweight Championship, and Zack Ryder creating the Internet Championship.
  • This was the genesis of both the American Wrestling Association (AWA) and the WWE (originally the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF) and then the World Wrestling Federation (WWF)): In the early 1950s, Verne Gagne wanted to be the NWA World Heavyweight Champion. The heads of the National Wrestling Alliance wanted to keep the belt on Lou Thesz, to the point where they wouldn't let Thesz wrestle Gagne anymore. Gagne and a couple of smaller promoters from the upper midwest broke away and formed the AWA in 1960, with Gagne as champion and boss. The WWWF formed under similar circumstances in the New England region in 1963: NWA champ "Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers was reluctant to wrestle outside of the NE area. When the NWA had him lose the belt to Lou Thesz, he quit the NWA in protest, then joined with the regional promotion, Capitol Wrestling Corporation, to form the WWWF.
  • All Japan Pro Wrestling and NJPW both broke away from the JWA in 1970. Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling was formed when the founders of both of those breakaways, Giant Baba and Antonio Inoki, rejected Atsushi Onita's idea that "everything should be allowed in Puroresu" while SHIN FMW broke away(sort of) from regular FMW when Tarzan Gotoh was trying to become a draw without Atsushi Onita, W*ING broke away from FMW altogether and IWA Japan broke away from W*ING. The Universal Wrestling Federation broke away from New Japan and Shooto broke away from that over Tiger Mask feeling he wasn't getting paid enough. Super World Of Sports was formed when Megane Super hired All Japan wrestler Genichiro Tenryu as a spokesperson and MS executive Hachiro Tanaka decided to use Tenryu as the foundation for his own pro wrestling promotion and Tenryu broke away from that to form WAR when Giant Baba wouldn't let him return to All Japan. Pro Wrestling NOAH broke away from All Japan following the death of Giant Baba when Mitsuharu Misawa felt his widow was restricting the roster too much. Pro Wrestling ZERO1 broke away from New Japan when Inoki had Naoya Ogawa shoot on Shinya Hashimoto in an effort to force his retirement. Big Mouth Loud was formed when New Japan wrestler Katsuyori Shibata was told he could make more money as The Ace of a new promotion. Wrestle-1 broke away from All Japan when The Great Muta left the company in shame after TARU beat Super Hate so badly Hate had a stroke. Suffice to say, whenever an even moderately successful Japanese wrestler leaves a company they are associated with, with even a little publicity, fans expect a new one to be formed around them within a month.
  • Lucha Libre Internacional broke away from EMLL, taking on the Universal Wrestling Association as its athletic commission in 1975 when several key EMLL employees and investors discovered Salvador Lutteroth was grooming his son to take over the company. AAA broke away from EMLL in 1992 when Antonio Peña decided he wanted more freedom in booking. Ironically AAA's entry into the market was instrumental in killing the earlier breakaway group. Perros Del Mal Producciones was an engineered breakaway from CMLL that went horribly wrong and ended up working with AAA.
  • For many years, the Memphis wrestling territory was run by promoter Nick Gulas. His head booker, Jerry Jarrett, entered an agreement with Gulas that he would eventually buy into a full partnership with Gulas. When Gulas screwed Jarrett over on the dealnote . A furious Jarrettnote  then set about plans to start his own promotion, convincing Gulas' top talent (Jerry Lawler) and the announce team (Lance Russell and Dave Brown) to jump ship to his promotion. Several of Gulas' other wrestlers (including "Soul Man" Rocky Johnson) caught wind of the plan and signed on. Within weeks, Jarrett's promotion had fully taken over the Memphis territory and Gulas' promotion had been shut down.note 
  • After being fired from The Nation of Domination by Faarooq, Crush and Savio Vega formed their own groups "Disciples of Apocalypse" (DoA) and "Los Boricuas" respectively, leading to The Gang Warz.
  • ECW tapes were RF Video's main source of income, so when ECW went out of business in 2001, RF Video decided to make up for that loss of income by becoming a distributor of CZW media. Getting CZW / John Zandig to agree proved difficult however, but while watching All Pro Wrestling's second King Of Indies a little later that year, the guys at RF Video decide they wanted that instead and created Ring of Honor, based around previous KOI winner Christopher Daniels, then most recent winner American Dragon and runner up Low Ki.
  • Behind the scenes (mostly) example: Jeff Jarrett and Vince McMahon came to foster a mutual loathing for each other during Jeff's last WWE run, to the point that, when WCW went under, neither Jeff nor Vince were at all interested in working with the other — Vince even announced, live and simulcast on WWF Raw and WCW Monday Nitro, that Jeff was "G-double-O-double-N-double-E... GOONNEE!" So Jeff (with the help of his father, long-time promoter Jerry Jarrett) started his own Professional Wrestling promotion, TNA, now known as Impact Wrestling. On a side note, it should be noted that Jerry Jarrett is a long-time friend of the McMahon family; he personally delivered the wrestler who would become Vladimir Kozlov to the WWE. Also, Jeff Jarrett said that Vince was one of his biggest supporters during the death of his wife, so things have probably been patched up between the two.
    • Having been pushed out of TNA by his major investor, Dixie Carter, Jeff looked to repeat the feat by starting a new promotion, Global Force Wrestling. His quest to get GFW a television presence was met by many a setback, but the GFW brand nonetheless survived and eventually ended up supplanting the name TNA, as the major investors who replaced Carter brought Jeff Jarrett back, along with as many wrestlers associated with GFW as they could, and allowed them to permanently take over "iMPACT", TNA's main television show. Though someone apparently got cold feet, as iMPACT quietly dropped the GFW branding after a while.
  • His time in Evolution left a deep impression on Randy Orton. His ousting from the stable is largely considered his Start of Darkness, and left him a strong hatred for Triple H and to a lesser extent Batista. However, what shows Randy's inability to get over what happened in Evolution is his formation of his stable the Legacy, an obvious Expy of Evolution, but this time with Randy as the leader of the group and his quest to keep hold of the WWE Title paralleling Hunter's own quest to remain World Heavyweight Champion.
  • After David Otunga schemed to get Wade Barrett kicked out of The Nexus and CM Punk installed as leader in his place, Barrett went to SmackDown and formed The Corre instead. And two other founding members of The Corre, Justin Gabriel and Heath Slater, walked out of The Nexus shortly after Barrett was deposed, unhappy with the way Punk was running things. Barrett is quick to point out that, unlike with The Nexus, he is not the leader of The Corre, as it's a gathering of equals; then again, he said that about The Nexus at first too. It took a few months, but Barrett's It's All About Me attitude took over, and Gabriel and Slater promptly disbanded the group because of it.
  • After a stint in the indies, New Japan Pro-Wrestling and Ring of Honor, the former ROH Bullet Club a.k.a The Elite members Cody Rhodes, The Young Bucks, Kenny Omega and Hangman Page (sans Marty Scurll) split up from both New Japan and Ring of Honor and started their own promotion called All Elite Wrestling with the backing of Jacksonville Jaguars owners Shahid and Tony Khan.
  • After a time of infighting between the members of the New World Order, Kevin Nash and a handful of other nWo members, including Randy Savage and Konnan, split away to form their own babyface faction of the group, the Wolfpac, which used a black-and-red color scheme as opposed to the original nWo's black-and-white, while Hulk Hogan and the members that stayed with him created nWo Hollywood, which used the original black-and-white color scheme.

    Radio 
  • The Goon Show: In "The Greatest Mountain in the World", Neddie's plans to become the first man to climb the highest mountain in the world are foiled when he learns that Mount Everest has already been climbed. So he instead plans to construct a higher mountain in Hyde Park and climb that.
  • After his contract with Premier Radio ended, Art Bell founded his own radio show on internet radio. After his death, Heather Wade, the current host of that program, was fired after taking too many days off to grieve his death without having a guest host on (as the program was driven by subscriptions that unlocked the past show archive for podcasting, this meant that the subscribers were not getting their money's worth.) She started her own paranormal talk show soon afterwards. Finally, two years later, after the digital radio network was sold upon the retirement of the majority owner/producer/webmaster, the then-current host was fired. He then proceeded to start his own small digital radio network.

    Tabletop Games 
  • The third party Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 sourcebook Untapped Potential was created by a group of Psionics fans in response to perceived quality issues in the Complete Psionics first party sourcebook.
    • The group responsible for that book, Dreamscarred Press, would later port over the psionics rules to Pathfinder, along with spiritual successors to Magic of Incarnum and Tome of Battle.
  • Pathfinder was created by D&D fans upset with the way that D&D's 4th edition turned out.
  • The Pathfinder Adventure Path Kingmaker has the player characters start out as adventurers with the order to secure a disputed border area and defend it against possible raiders or invaders from neighboring countries. Starting with the second adventure, they are making their own kingdom, with whatever additional features they want to!
    • The rules from Kingmaker have been expanded and updated in the Ultimate Campaign rulebook, which also includes rules for building your own stronghold or running your own business or organization between adventurers.
  • Pokémon Tabletop Adventures: The Babel campaign setting for Pokémon Tabletop United contains two examples of this trope.
    • The Battle Company is reimagined as a fourth MegaCorp founded by disgruntled former employees of Silph Co., the Devon Corporation, and Galactic Enterprises. While it has far less power and influence than the other three mega-corps, the Battle Company has nevertheless carved out a niche for itself in Heizhou's economy, most notably by inventing the Mega Stones which make Mega Evolution possible.
    • In one campaign hook for the setting, Devon and Galactic Enterprises try to impose regulations which would heavily restrict, if not outright ban, the use of Silph Co.'s signature Technical Machines in the Heizhou Pokémon League. In response, Silph Co. decides to pull out of the existing League and found one of its own where TMs are legal.
  • The Sons of Medusa chapter of Space Marines originated in a variation of this in Warhammer40000. A schism in the Adeptus Mechanicus spread to their chapter, resulting in several companies being exiled by the Iron Council. These proceeded to form their own chapter, one of the quite rare examples of a Space Marine chapter being founded without the consent of the High Lords of Terra. The Sons of Medusa were eventually recognized by both the Imperial government and the Iron Hands, but relations with the latter are chilly at best.

    Theatre 
  • In The Book of Mormon, after the Mormon church closes down Kevin Price and Arnold Cunningham's mission for teaching ridiculous things to the Ugandans, they decide to continue the mission as their own sect of Latter-Day Saints, based on the Book of Arnold.

    Video Games 
  • Chroma Squad starts out with the stunt actors for the Chroma Rangers walking off the set after getting fed up with the director's orders, and shortly thereafter starting a new studio in a warehouse owned by a relative of Chroma Blue's stuntperson.
  • In Deep Rock Galactic, drinking a Smart Stout might make your dwarf realize that the titular corporation is exploiting its workers, and if they joined together to make their own mining company, they'd be rich... or they could have another beer instead.
  • Laharl in Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories: "I don't even wanna be a part of this stupid world. I wouldn't stay if you begged me! I’ll go find a better world, with heaps of food! And cookies!"
  • In their A rank support in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Petra invites Ashe to come with her to her home nation Brigid. While Ashe admits he'd like to visit, he still wants to focus on his Goal in Life to become a knight and thus contend with that duty. Petra, as the future queen of Brigid, offers to establish an order of knights in Brigid for Ashe to be a part of. If the two are paired together, the epilogue will say that Petra did found an order of knights with Ashe's guidance, naming them the Blue Sun Order and using them to declare independence from Fódlan.
  • Fallout 3:
    • If you manage to depose President Dave, he'll leave with plans to start a new republic. Presumably one that's better and without people who get more votes than him. It does not go well. And if you provoke him while he's in a slump, he'll attack you.
    • The Enclave is also a form of this. After their main headquarters in the Pacific went boom, their chief intelligence in D.C. figured "fuck it" and reformed the remnants as his own democracy, rather than a fake democracy of royal presidents. Not that he's any better - it's a low blow to call an AI an inhuman monster and someone who can't vote, but it logic bombs him to death.
  • In Fallout: New Vegas, one of the options for the White Glove Society sidequest is to expose Mortimer as a cannibal. When he realizes that he won't be able to turn the rest of the society (who are reformed cannibals) back to the old ways, he declares that he'll build an even better society before running off. You can also build your own empire after disregarding both Legion and NCR and killing or subduing Mr. House. And since it's Vegas, it will have blackjack and hookers!
  • In Fashion Forward Risha decides to start her own clothing boutique because none of the ones she's visited in Hollywood have non-petite sizes.
  • Grand Theft Auto: Vice City: Prior to the start of the game, Tommy Vercetti is a trusted and highly skilled enforcer of the Forelli mafia family. But after a drug deal goes south and he loses everything, he proceeds to start the search for lost money by building a whole new criminal organization in Vice City. After he finds out that Ricardo Diaz was behind the ambush on the trade, he (violently) adds his holdings to the growing gang. By the end of the game, entire city's underbelly is under Tommy's control, independent from any other mafia family.
  • Mario Party: Island Tour: Bowser, unhappy for not being invited to Party Islands whereas Mario and his friends were, decides to place an ominous tower in front of them called Bowser's Tower, hoping to draw more attention and also creating evil bubble clones from a machine.
  • Mass Effect: Fed up with the bureaucratic crap at the Citadel, Garrus Vakarian traveled to Omega and formed a task force to antagonize the local criminals and warlords. He gained so much notoriety as "Archangel" that he forced an Enemy Mine between the Blue Suns, Eclipse and Blood Pack, the three most powerful crime syndicates in the lawless Terminus Systems, and you find him just as they're gearing up to (try to) kill him.
  • Happens several times over in Mass Effect: Andromeda:
    • First off, the krogan, who are so pissed by their shabby treatment at the hands of Acting Director Tann they leave en masse, founding their own colony, which up until Ryder gets there is doing pretty well for itself, a fact their leader, Nakmor Morda, takes pleasure in rubbing in Ryder's face.
    • The Exiles, who got kicked out five minutes after the krogan, set up shop on Kadara. That doesn't work out so well, because the water on Kadara is pure poison.
    • In one quest, Ryder runs into the representative of an independent colony, not affiliated with the Exiles, living elsewhere on Eos, who left because they didn't want to work for Tann. Fortunately, they're peaceful, just preferring to be left alone.
    • The Charlatan, shadowy boss of the Collective, wasn't involved in the Nexus Uprising, but struck out with the Exiles. On arrival at Kadara, they figured both Tann and Sloane Kelly had done such awful jobs that it'd be better to make their own start.
  • Mortal Kombat 1: This turns out to be the origin of the New Era's Shirai Ryu, as Scorpion, disgusted with his own brother Sub-Zero's treachery against Earthrealm and cruel leadership of the Lin Kuei, quits the clan and creates his own.
  • The Saikyo-ryu (lit. "Strongest Style") dojo started by Street Fighter's Dan Hibiki is his answer to being booted out of Gouken's Ansatsuken dojo for being too Revenge-obsessed with Sagat in his training.
  • After being kicked out of nearly every guild, this is what motivates Karol to start one with Yuri in Tales of Vesperia.
  • In Terranigma, Marily from Loire works at Mme. Papilo's expensive boutique at low pay, but after Loire expands, you can help her start her own boutique that sells affordable clothing to the masses.
  • In Tokyo Xtreme Racer 2, "Killing Machine" Shūhei Kitagata has abandoned his former team, SPEED BOX, out of shame because of their low level. To make up for it, he's created his own team, called Unlimited. By the time of Tokyo Xtreme Racer 3, because of disagreements and tensions, "Lemon Flavor" Tsuguharu Katō, in turn, started his own racing time inspired by Unlimited, fittingly called Neo Limited.
  • In the Total War: Shogun 2 DLC The Fall of the Samurai, you start out on the side of either The Emperor or the Shogun. The goal is to unify Japan under as either the Empire or the Shogunate. However, halfway through, you are presented with a third option: tell both the Emperor and the Shogun "screw you" and form a Republic instead with you at the helm, although this results in both declaring war on you.
  • Tyranny: One of the game's Story Branching paths involves the Fatebinder starting their own faction in the Tiers instead of backing one of Kyros' two existing armies. You do this by allying with the Vendrien Guard in the first chapter, essentially conscripting them into Kyros' armies by turning them into agents of the Court and therefore subordinate to you.

    Web Animation 
  • Homestar Runner:
    • In Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People: Strong Badia the Free, Strong Bad gets everybody to secede from the King of Town's domain. He thinks everybody is going to join the now-autonomous Strong Badia, but instead they all go off and create their own countries. The rest of the game is him trying to convince everyone to band together to overthrow the King.
    • In the Cheat Commandos episode, "Two Parter: Part One", after getting kicked out of the Cheat Commandos, Gunhaver, Silent Rip, and Crackotage get jobs at a pizza joint. When that doesn't work, they start their own restaurant...which doesn't turn out so well.
      Kitchen Commandos, a really bad idea!
      It closed down after three mooooonths!
  • Over The Hills: The plot is kicked off by the railroad that serves the Penwyth Valley and the towns in it closing down, and the people suffering through a winter that closed the roads. So, they all banded together to start a heritage railway group to run trains on the line themselves.
  • Pucca:
    • Pucca and Ching wanted to visit Abyo and Garu's treehouse but Abyo wouldn't allow girls in. They built their own treehouse (which was better as expected of something built by Pucca) and wouldn't allow Garu and Abyo in.
    • When Ling-Ling wouldn't allow Pucca and Ching to join the cheerleading squad, they started their own.
    • Also, because Texas Lugie and Sloppy Sue didn't like the food served at the Goh Rong, they started a rival restaurant.
  • Red vs. Blue: In season 14's "Mr. Red vs. Mr. Blue"; incensed over not getting a part in the Blood Gulch Crew's remake of Reservoir Dogs because of its lack of female roles, Sister declares that she'll make her own movie with an all-female cast.
    Sister: Fine! Enjoy being sexist! I'm gonna go make my own movie! And it'll only have girls! Then you'll see who's sexist!

    Webcomics 
  • Played for Laughs in 8-Bit Theater where not one, not two, but three groups of heroes (for a given value of the term anyway) simultaneously dissolve their groups and form new ones amongst each other. Including the protagonists. And their, supposedly, mortal enemies. Even weirder, for three groups that initially consisted of four members each (for a total of twelve people) they somehow ended up with five teams. Then six teams. The entire matter was dropped when no one could remember whom their new allies were.
  • In Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures, the three times we know about this happening two ended disastrously. Probably has something to do with the instigators of the first two being Creatures.
    • First, the Cubi Cyra decided to take over a city called Hishaan from the dragon M'Chek, but after she succeeded in killing him an unexpected energy surge destroyed the city and in the process kickstarted the genocidal Dragon/Cubi War that resulted in the deaths of almost all of Cyra's children save one and the complete destruction of many other clans.
    • Second, the Demon Aliph Soulstealer/Dark Pegasus was snubbed for a position of leadership in his family's city of Zinvth, so he tried to make his own and wound up accidentally creating the Undead race in the process when he screwed up a spell and made his would-be puppets self-aware.
    • The third was the direct result of the second, when the newly sentient Undead decided to make their own nation and founded Trik'na Island, where they can live in peace without fear of being killed on sight. It's actually very successful economically since its residents neither need to eat or sleep, but the living world is reluctant to deal with them.
  • Trawn from Electric Wonderland started her independent newspaper out of discontent with futuristic Cyberspace news outlets placing decreased emphasis on presenting harsh truths to citizens.
  • Guilded Age: The effectiveness of the Gastonian Peacemakers was not lost on Harky, especially after the miserable defeat in B'ial Vezk, so in response he put forth a call to arms for a team of champions that would serve the World's Rebellion, one member from each race. It worked. Extremely well.
  • In Kevin & Kell, after R.L. ousts Kell as Herd Thinners C.E.O. and kills all of the changes Kell made to the company, Kell decides to open a competing company, with encouragement and backing from The Rabbit Council, who see Kell's potential company as a way to eliminate their own competition - i.e. other prey species.
  • The Order of the Stick prequel volume that shows the backstory of Xykon and Redcloak and how they came to be villains shows us that Xykon, then a young sorcerer, once did this. As an apprentice to The Unholy Master, Xykon was under consideration to be promoted to the Number Two position... but was passed over in favor of both his Friendly Rival (and sometimes lover) Yydranna and Keith Baker. (A real life Friendly Rival to the author of OOTS.) Furious at having Baker chosen over him, Xykon decided it was time to quit being an apprentice and go into business as a villain for himself.
  • xkcd
    • In Standards, two of the characters create a single unifying standard for the fourteen other (competing) standards. Instead of helping anything, there are now just 15 competing standards.
    • In Honor Societies, Cueball creates tautology club when he finds out it doesn't already exist.

    Web Original 
  • This happens online all the time, due to the relative ease of creating a website. If we listed all the examples we'd be here all day. However, two famous victims are LiveJournal, which has a half-zillion clones at this point (all of them near-perfect clones in fact, due to the site's open-source codebase), and DeviantArt, whose restrictive policies led to the creation of SheezyArt and later FurAffinity. In most such cases, the result is similar to the comedic examples in fiction, with so many people starting their own site that none of them have many users.
  • Also, Wikis. Many are started because they have focused subject matter, but many others are founded because Wikipedia's standards of notability and citation somehow exclude them, or they think there's something biased about it. For instance, Conservapedia was created by a group who decried Wikipedia's "evidence" and "objectivity", and made their own online encyclopedia with their own bias. This very wiki specializes in covering the tropes of popular culture. Since Wikia allows anyone that wants to start a Wiki to do so, this happens quite often with those who don't like the guidelines, procedures, etc., etc. of a particular wiki. It often doesn't end well, since most of these people are neither suited to be admins nor have the ability to gather followers to their new wiki. One of the most prominent examples (and far more successful than most) is the Star Wars fandom's Wookieepedia, which came about when Wikipedia purged a great many Star Wars articles as "non-notable". Copies of the purged articles were part of the core of Wookieepedia in its early days. Now Wookieepedia is the 5th-largest Wiki in existence.
    • Wikia - and its successor Fandom - itself was a purveyor in many wiki drifts, most notably TFWiki.net, which originated when the ones who did the Teletraan-1 Wiki decided Wikia was hindering them.
    • TV Tropes itself spawned several imitators after more stringent rules about what was appropriate content on the wiki were put in place.
  • An infamous example is Encyclopedia Dramatica, which was originally started as a place to chronicle Livejournal drama after Wikipedia purged it due to no-notability.
  • Gaia Online, being the progenitor of the avatar role-playing message-boards, had a ton of these spring up during its early years (Magivolve being one of, if not the very first). Most of these, however, did not have the server space to support a massive userbase or funds to run a website, and even more were run by people who couldn't program and used bought or free code and assets to build their custom avatar and currency systems. Staff and moderators were hired from members of their own userbase (most of them being teenagers), with the owners barely eclipsing their early twenties themselves. As a result, they weren't run nearly as well as Gaia and most closed down in a few years, while the ones that are still alive haven't updated since their heydays.
  • Once Box Office Mojo got a counter-intuitive redesign that even hid part of the content behind the paywall, some former fans decided to get together and make a film box office site like the old BOM. Whether it will take off remains to be seen.
  • SpaceBattles.com birthed not one, but two, Questionable Questing and Sufficient Velocity.
    • QQ was created after one too many crackdowns and censures on the Role-Playing Game board, where some members found the site's rules against NSFW content too restrictive. A few got together and created a place with basically no rules against NSFW... anything so long as it was posted in the correct place.
    • Due to some unpleasantness regarding an admin being 'retired', Sufficient Velocity was spun-off, with many threads cloned or moved. Acted as an alpha site when SB reached capacity, then the users which had evacuated shuffled back when its problems were resolved at the eleventh hour. Is since better known for it's more... in-depth approach to site rules and moderation.
  • After Tumblr's infamous "no NSFW" rule change that saw the purging of a lot of content and the death of a lot of blogs, a number of former users created newTumbl which, in their own words, "offers asylum to all those who feel persecuted on other social media sites simply for wanting to exercise your freedom of speech." It's effectively what Tumblr was before the massive content ban.
  • The browser game Politics And War was inspired by the creator playing Cyber Nations. The games have similar concept and execution, but Politics And War is much more in-depth with deeper mechanics and gameplay, and, in recent years, a much more active userbase. On most online forums, Politics And War is considered the superior game.
  • Cyber Nations did something similar earlier on to NationStates. While Nation States is more of a day-to-day executive decision making game with more roleplay elements, Cyber Nations is inspired by it, but lets you micromanage more aspects of your nation, such as going to war, trading, etc. The games are different enough that comparing them is like comparing Apples to Oranges.
  • SCP-1054-FR-J was written as a satire of certain events surrounding the SCP Foundation, in which a scientist leaves the Foundation and starts his own competing organisation, the RPD Command. Then another scientist bring up grievances about how he's running the Command, while at the same time similar events happen at the Foundation, causing both resulting organisations to split again, and so on.

    Web Videos 

    Western Animation 
  • An episode of Arthur revolves around the kids creating their own "James Hound" movie, since they're not old enough to see the actual PG-13 movie themselves. They eventually discover that all the outtakes are actually better than what they planned.
    • An earlier one involved Muffy getting fed up with Arthur's shabby clubhouse and leaving to start her own club, and Buster and Francine deciding to join her. Gradually, everyone abandons not only Arthur's never-been-official-anyway club, but each other's as well, until everyone is a one-person "club" of their own. Eventually they all realize how stupid it all turned out, and get back together.
    • A later one involves Francine and a group of friends starting a band called U Stink, but Francine quits and starts her own band called We Stink with Arthur, Buster and George. Arthur and Buster end up getting mad at her and quitting, claiming they will form their own band and call it She Stinks. George doesn't mind staying, but Francine gives up.
  • Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!: In "Doo Not Disturb", after Jack and Josh Stanley inherited the Good Sons Inn from their mother, Josh didn't want to run the place the same way he did and, unable to convince his brother to see things his way, forfeited his share and started a rival hotel named Castaway Resort Hotel. In spite of his success, Josh still wanted the now renamed Good Son Inn to the point he dressed himself as his mother's ghost to scare away Jack's guests.
  • A mock episode of Birdman (1967) retconned Murko the Marauder as a F.E.A.R. agent leaving to start his own criminal organization.
  • In Camp Lazlo, Edward starts an "I Hate Lazlo" club, inviting everyone except, of course, Lazlo. He tells Lazlo to form his own club, the "Nothing Club", which Lazlo does. Soon everyone leaves Edward's club after finding it too boring (it's all about talking about how much they hate Lazlo, which only Edward does) and head over to Lazlo's.
  • In the Care Bears: Adventures in Care-a-Lot episode, "Whose Friend is Who?" a bit of a club war gets started because Cheer, Harmony, and Love-a-Lot reject Funshine and Oopsy's help in making a "project" with their human friend McKenna. So, with Grumpy, they make their own "project" and a subsequent club to go with it. The girls retaliate by forming their own club, and a montage of the two clubs one-upping each other in their projects ensues, with McKenna stuck in the middle, not wanting to pick a side. She eventually gets the two clubs to see how silly they're being by making a club with Wingnut, and calls them out when they band together to exclude her club.
  • The Critic: When Duke Phillips can't get the daughter of the assistant to one of his most expendable employees into The Rainbow's End Preschool:
    Duke Phillips: I've never been so insulted!
    Mr. Jordell: So what are you going to do, build your own preschool? Ha ha, your own preschool, I'd like to see that. (Chuckles)
    (Cut to: "Duke Phillips' Pre-school: Built on a Dare.")
  • In an episode of Daria, after Sandi tricked Quinn into volunteering to help set up the school dance, she grew frustrated over the fact that Quinn wouldn't take her advice. She decides to throw her own party with the rest of the Fashion Club. It doesn't go over very well though. Since it's the same night as the school dance, no one shows up except for Joey, Jamie and Jeffy, and they quickly leave as soon as they realize Quinn isn't coming.
  • One episode of the Dennis the Menace animated series portrayed Dennis and Margareth as business partners in a lemonade stand. Unsatisfied with her share of the profits, she started her own lemonade stand to compete against her now former business partner.
    • Dennis and Joey grew so tired of working on Margareth's float for a Fourth of July parade (and of her bossiness) they declared independence from her and made their own float.
  • In an episode of Doug, Patti was rejected from the Honkers baseball team, because she's a girl. As a result, she forms "Patti's Pulverizers", which consists of players who were rejected by the Honkers.
  • In The Fairly OddParents!, When Timmy treats his friends Chester, A.J., Elmer, and Sanjay like trash, they are forced to start their own vendetta club against him aptly titled "Anti-Timmy Force 4". The "trash" part, however, is taken literally, since their clubhouse is a dumpster. Simultaneously, after Timmy learns that his friends cast him out, he decided to form his own friend group: the aptly named Power Pals, consisting of Super Sam, Dark Mark, Joan Jet, and Wet Willie.
  • In Family Guy, Peter is so jealous of Joe's home movie theater that he decides to build an addition onto his house to create an even bigger and better theater than Joe's. Of course, this plot is quickly forgotten once Peter digs up an Indian skull and the real plot of the episode starts.
  • In an episode of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Bloo is not allowed into a rock band called Pizza Party. So to spite them, he invents his own band called Taco Fiesta (because, he reasons, tacos are more exotic than pizza). Bloo's own band leaves him and so he forms another band, which is just himself in various costumes.
    • In another episode, Bloo started his own foster home for imaginary friends, which was nothing more than a cardboard box.
  • In the original Franklin, there were a few of these: Franklin's "Turtle Trackers" group in "Franklin Wants a Badge," the various characters' secret clubs in "Franklin's Secret Club" and Franklin's "Turtle Point" in "Franklin's Birthday Party." In "Franklin, the Planner" on the Franklin and Friends spinoff, the kids all end up doing this, pairing off and starting their own floor plans for a new treefort when it doesn't seem like there's enough room to fit each of their own ideas in the original floor plan. The problem, of course, being that only one treefort can be built and they need something that satisfies everyone. It's Franklin who comes up with the idea for compromise, they can't all have everything they want in the treefort, but each of them can use their best idea and they'll put it all together.
  • The above quote and Trope Namer is from the Futurama episode "The Series Has Landed" after Bender is kicked out of Lunar Park, and later when Fry and Leela keep Bender out of the Apollo 11 lunar lander. The line has gone on to become a popular meme.
  • In Hey Arnold!, Rhonda threw a party to which she only invited kids she deemed cool enough, Arnold himself making that list. Arnold quickly got bored of listening to Rhonda prattle on about her vacation in Europe and insulting his friends and left, rejoining with his friends and suggesting they throw their own party on the roof of the boarding house. One by one, the other "cool kids" leave Rhonda's party for Arnold's, realizing that the "geeks" are having more fun. Eventually, Rhonda gave up when everyone left, and she joined them all in the end. (Though she still was going to consider herself a cool kid).
  • Iron Man: Armored Adventures: When Justin Hammer took over Stark International, Tony decided to create his own company. Pepper suggested he named it "Circuits Maximus" but Tony had already opted for "Stark Solutions". Both names count as Mythology Gag since Tony Stark did start companies with both names in separate occasions he lost control of Stark International.
  • Jem: After Eric Raymond lost his half of Starlight Music, the Misfits needed another music company to promote their albums so Pizzazz asked her father to start one.
    • In "KJEM", Jem took over a radio station so the previous owner wouldn't lose it to a former employee who had started his own radio station for not liking how his former boss ran things.
    • Kimber (from Jem and the Holograms) and Stormer (from the Misfits) were feeling underappreciated and temporarily became a duo.
  • King of the Hill features Thatherton Fuels, a company founded by M.F. Thatherton, a former employee of Strickland Propane.
  • Hanna-Barbera's The Little Rascals:
    • In "Beauty Queen for a Day", when Alfalfa won't let Darla into the He-Man Woman-Haters' Club, Darla threatens to organize a She-Woman Man-Haters' Club: "And there will be no boys allowed!"
    • In "Big Top Rascals", the Rascals put on their own circus after being denied admission to a real circus. Darla had told the circus owner that she and the boys were tending the animals because they had no money for tickets.
  • A Looney Tunes cartoon started with Daffy Duck as a janitor of an inn that belonged to Porky Pig. Daffy was feeling unappreciated and, when Porky tried to show his appreciation by giving him a new broom, Daffy decided to start his own inn. Daffy's dishonest attempts to run his former employer out of business backfired. His last plan consisted of blowing up Porky's inn. Daffy DID blow up Porky's inn, but accidentally revealed the presence of oil under it, allowing Porky to build an even better inn. To show Daffy he doesn't keep hard feelings, Porky hired him to work at the new inn... as a janitor.
  • One episode of The Mask featured a character named Celia N. Airtight. She was a top researcher at Wrapmaster Corporation until being fired for knowing too much about food preserving and then she started her own company named Putterware to compete against Wrapmaster. Not satisfied with selling more than her rival, she plotted to turn leftover food into monsters to destroy Wrapmaster.
  • Mission Hill - when Andy and his friends are kept out of a hip new nightclub in their neighborhood, they retaliate by pretending to open a new club in an unlocked boiler room, and keep out all of the hip crowd who queue up at the door.
  • Molly of Denali: In "Home Made Heroes," Molly and Tooey are disappointed when a comic book they read about Alaska has no Alaska Native characters in it, so they create their own Alaska Native superheroes.
  • One episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic features Scootaloo trading her obsession with Rainbow Dash for an obsession with the Washouts, an group of extreme-sports performing pegasi who "washed out" of the Wonderbolts. They're led by Rainbow's old rival Lightning Dust, who felt that the Wonderbolts' code of honor (under which she was expelled) is too restrictive and limits the stunts they're able to do.
  • NASCAR Racers: Megan temporarily left Fastex to start her own racing team.
  • In the Phineas and Ferb episode "Hail Doofania!", Dr. Doofenshmirtz is frustrated that his goody two-shoes little brother Roger got elected mayor of Danville, so he tries to build his own floating city in Danville Harbor. Doofania's civic anthem even boasts "It's founded on spite!"
  • A Pup Named Scooby-Doo: Lester Leonard left the Critter Getters to start his own monster-catching business.
  • The male unicorn decides to build his own ark after missing Noah's on Robot Chicken. [1]
  • Similarly, in Rocket Power, the kids try to make their own movie and find it to be much harder than they were expecting.
  • Rocky and Bullwinkle: In one Fan Club segment, Boris is disgusted by the club oath and decides to form his own fan club.
  • The Simpsons
    • In "Homer the Great", the Stonecutters start the No Homers Society after they get disgruntled by Homer's attempts to do good in his position of power.
    • In "$pringfield, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling", Bart is kicked out of Mr. Burns' casino for being underage. The Squeaky-Voiced Teen taunts him, saying "What are you going to do? Start your own casino? In your tree house? And get all your little friends to come? I'd like to see that!" Cut to the next scene, where Bart is welcoming his friends into his treehouse casino. "Well, he certainly showed me."
    • In "Homer the Moe", when Moe's Tavern gets a hip makeover and the old customers are no longer welcome, Homer starts a "hunting lodge" in his garage (he couldn't have a tavern there) where he and the old regulars hang out until Moe comes to his senses. They even went as far as taking part on regular hunting trips as all hunting lodges are required by law.
    • In "Fear of Flying", when Homer was banned from Moe's the first time, Marge suggested he pretend the house was a bar, so he could spend every night at home. He responded he wasn't even going to dignify it with an answer.
    • And yet again, in "Lisa the Vegetarian", when Homer is offended that Ned didn't invite him to his family reunion, Homer says he'll have his own barbecue and invite whomever he wants - "That'll show you!". However, Ned politely asks whether he can come and Homer says "Sure!" reflexively. D'oh!
    • In "Lemon of Troy", this was the cause of Jebediah Springfield and Shelbyville Manhattan's split:
      Shelbyville: I tell you I won't live in a town that robs men of the right to marry their cousins.
      Springfield: Then we'll form our own town. Who will come with me, and live a life devoted to chastity, abstinence, and a flavorless mush I call root marm?
  • Sofia the First: In "Princess Adventure Club", Princess Zooey doesn't let Amber join the titular club and Amber retaliates by starting her own adventure club.
  • In South Park, the boys start a garage band called Moop, but they're having trouble figuring out their direction and style. Cartman insists that they do Christian rock, claiming that all they have to do is take existing popular songs and replace words with "Jesus". The others think it's dumb, so Cartman leaves and starts his own Christian rock band with Butters and Token called Faith + 1, doing exactly what he said, and they become extremely popular. Naturally, Cartman ends up ruining it all by the end.
  • Spongebob Squarepants: Spongebob started his own "Pretty Patty" stand after being mocked for his idea by Mr. Krabs and Squidward. He ended up having 46,853 customers. Seeing how successful the stand was, Mr. Krabs traded Spongebob the Krusty Krab for it...right before all the customers starting experiencing colorful side effects to the patties and demanded a refund.
  • In Star Trek: Lower Decks, the plan of the fourth season villain Nick Locarno is to start effectively an alternate Starfleet called "Nova Fleet", gathering up disgruntled crewmembers from many factions while using a doomsday weapon to threaten everyone into letting them operate independently. He presents it as a better and more equitable organization, but the whole notion stems from bitterness over his expulsion from Starfleet over a decade previous and losing the career he assumed he'd have, so he's making a version that he can be in charge of.
  • Taz-Mania episode "Francis Takes a Stand" featured Francis starting a lemonade stand. Taz opened another one across the street from Francis'. The only customer who ever appeared was a tax collector who, after buying a lemonade from Francis (and hating its taste), revealed himself a tax collector and took the money he gave Francis as payment for the lemonade.
  • A benevolent example occurs late in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012), sometime after Karai recovers from Shredder's brainwashing. She decides to establish her own Foot Clan faction by recruiting her old friend Shinigami and some mercenary ninjas, in a bid to reclaim the former one's lost honor (due to Shredder's destructive and manipulative actions having been done solely for the sake of revenge at the expense of her free will).
  • Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum: In "I Am Marie Curie", since the girls of Poland aren't allowed to go to university, they start their own university where they can learn more about science. Brad takes inspiration from this idea and starts a butterfly club for people under 10.
  • In the third season of Young Justice, Batman and several members of the Justice League (plus their sidekicks on the Team) defect after the League's efforts are hampered by Lex Luthor's policies after he became the United Nations Secretary-General. The new organization gets the nickname "Batman Incorporated." This becomes subverted as it is revealed that Batman is leading his group alongside the League and the Team as part of a Benevolent Conspiracy.
    • On a more benevolent case, Beast Boy recruits a few members of the Team to become the Outsiders, who are a more public team of teen heroes that can help promote the stand against meta-human trafficking.

Oh, no room for me in the trope sections, huh? Screw You Guys! I'm gonna go start my own website about tropes! With blackjack! And hookers! In fact, forget the website and the blackjack! ... Ahh, screw the whole thing.

 
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Pretty Patties

After Mr. Krabs and Squidward mockingly deride Pretty Patties as a stupid idea, SpongeBob, in defiance, partners with Patrick to open up his own restaurant and prove that Pretty Patties are a good idea.

How well does it match the trope?

4.6 (10 votes)

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