Storming the Castle

"The first card was The Tower. Maybe that was supposed to be the Manor. It got easy after that. The Devil was the master of the house, and Death was me, coming for him."

— Max in Max Payne, examining some Tarot cards

There are really only a few good ways to end an action movie. You've got your car chase, your mano-a-mano showdown, and your grand, sweeping Final Battle (and maybe something else. Or maybe not. Whatever). These are all well and good, but sometimes the Big Bad isn't gracious enough to come to you. In that case, you'd better go to them.

That means it's time to gear up and assault the bad guy's home base. Despite the title, it doesn't need to be a castle. Maybe it's a Cool House or mansion guarded by countless extremely well-trained warriors, a squad of bounty hunters looking for your head, and even The Dragon, but what choice do you have? Maybe the villain's stolen your secret sauce recipe, and he's not afraid to use it. Maybe he's gonna force your girlfriend to marry him. Maybe he just can't be trusted not to come back worse than before. In any case, the only way to stop him is to take him down.

In Real Life, particularly during the Middle Ages, actually storming the castle was the tactic of last resort, due to how most fortifications are built specifically to give the defenders every advantage possible and because breaching a well-built castle was a lengthy and costly undertaking. Any sort of direct assault on properly built and manned fortifications required a big numerical advantage, strong morale, siege engines and catapults and often repeated attacks — and even then it would be a bloodbath.

Castles seemed to be doomed as a defensive measure when gunpowder and cannons became widespread, but then defensive strategies evolved. Pre-gunpowder era, a high stone castle wall could offer solid protection again a besieging army. Post-gunpowder era, that huge stone wall is a perfect target for cannon barrage. Oh no! Kings and Queens are at the mercy of their enemies...Nope; fortress designers adapted by switching from stone walls to thick earth walls which were impervious to cannons. The apex of the new fortification was the Vauxban star-shaped fortress.^note The Vauxban star-shaped fortress kept rulers and military garrisons safe from sieges from the 1500s to the first decade of the 1900s. The invention of powered flight made star forts vulnerable to air bombing.

More often sieges were won by cutting off the defenders from supplies and starving them to death or surrender (which could take years), by breaching the defenses from the outside and marching in that way (not always practical), or by convincing enemy soldiers within the defenses to Turn Coat and let you in (very difficult). Going through the front door is almost always a suicide mission (assuming it's even possible), but it sure is entertaining.

While Storming the Castle can take place before the story's climax, the results are generally less dramatic. If a villain does this to the heroes, it's All Your Base Are Belong to Us and/or The Siege, in which a small number of heroes Hold the Line against numerically superior invaders. Weirdly, the good guys tend to win no matter who's attacking what... or at least they do most of the time.

If the heroes do manage to breach the castle, expect a Throne Room Throwdown.

May constitute a Suicide Mission. Compare Foe-Tossing Charge, which is on a smaller scale. Mook Depletion and Critical Staffing Shortage can make this smoother as it means less guards.

In a variant, instead of directly attacking the castle with massive forces, a small party will sneak in (through the sewers, disguised as delivering supplies, Dressing as the Enemy, etc.) and attempt to take the castle from within.

A sibling trope to All Your Base Are Belong to Us. Both come at pivotal moments in the story, and both involve the protagonist and the antagonist showing their full strength; heroes who get to storm the castle are usually in better straits than those who have to defend their home base against the Big Bad, however.

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Examples:

• Video Games

Anime & Manga

• In Assassination Classroom, the invasion of an enemy home base is the focus of the series' longer arcs. The first one has the students sneaking into a hotel to steal an antidote, and the second has them storming the God of Death's hideout to save Irina.
• Bleach has to date based two entire story arcs on this trope; first storming Soul Society to save Rukia and then storming Hueco Mundo to save Orihime.
• The Castle of Cagliostro: The titular castle is stormed by an army of Interpol cops led by Zenigata during the final act, at the same time that Lupin puts his plan to beat the Count into action.
• The finale of the manga version of Chrono Crusade has the good guy group storming Eden, Aion's base of operations...only to get caught up in his plans to storm Pandaemonium, the demon world. The end result is two battered, small groups rushing through the defenses of several hundred insane and feral demons to get to the throne room and fight each other over it.
• Code Geass: Lelouch and Suzaku attack the flying fortress Damocles in the finale of the second season. Another one happened in the later half of the first, with Suzaku storming the fortress of a secondary terrorist group, which ended in failure when his mecha ran out of power... Until Lelouch swooped in with a spare battery and together they utterly stomped the remaining forces.
• Spike's one-man assault (which briefly becomes two when Shin joins him) on the Red Dragon building in the finale of Cowboy Bebop, "The Real Folk Blues (Part 2)"
• The final Dirty Pair episode involves the girls rescuing their boss from Eagle's Dare Mountain. In an escalating series of plans that start with floating in with a hot air balloon wearing cat costumes (), and culminating with them walking through the front door after Kei flashes the guards.
• In Dragon Ball, as soon as he received directions there, Goku stormed the Red Ribbon Army HQ by himself, to take the rest of the Dragon Balls from them, after their hitman killed his friend. While his friends did travel alongside him to back him up, expecting incredible danger, Goku managed to defeat them anyway, and take the Dragon Balls, so while it was a great show of support, their presence wasn't really needed. The look on their faces when Goku told them exactly what he did was priceless. A good thing to note is that Goku was only 12 when he did this, so the gang were reminded it's a good thing that Goku has a heart of gold as well to go with his great strength.
• The final arc of Fullmetal Alchemist has the cast assault Grand Central, both above ground and underground (which is Father's headquarters).
• Future Diary has Minene, Nishijima and Yukki's friends sneak into the Eleventh's main base ( City Hall) to try and stop his plans. Little do they know that Yukki and Yuno were also storming the building...
• The climax of Golgo 13: The Professional has the titular character attack Dawson Tower in New York City, where the final shootout between Golgo, a squadron of attack helicopters, Snake, and Gold and Silver occurs.
• The final episodes of HeartCatch Pretty Cure! has the Cures and Coupe storm Big Bad Dune's spaceship to rescue Tsubomi's grandmother and restore Earth to its pristine condition after being transformed into a desert.
• The climax of Irresponsible Captain Tylor. Unusual in that it's not the Raalgon mothership they end up storming, but the UPSF headquarters. Shortly before this they actually do storm the Raaglon mothership, with not-immediately-obvious results.
• Episodes 25-26 of Jewelpet (2009) are about Rinko and co. discovering and invading Diana's lair, culminating in a climactic mid-season battle.
• In Episode 15 of Kiddy Grade Eclair and Lumiere storm GOTT headquarters after being hunted by them for the past few episodes.
• The series finale for Kirby: Right Back at Ya!. The whole team attacks Nightmare's fortress, and Dedede and Escargoon directly confront Customer Service for the first time. The audience weren't the only ones misled to think he was a normal human being. Instead, he has Kirby-style feet like all the other characters. Dedede is taken aback by it.
• The first season of Lyrical Nanoha has the heroes storming the Garden of Time. Its third season has two castles being stormed at the same time: Fate, Schach, and Verossa attack Jail Scaglietti's lab, while Nanoha, Hayate, Vita, and a ton of air mages attack the Saint's Cradle. Everyone else is preventing an All Your Base Are Belong to Us situation.
• Mazinger Z Grand Finale has the heroes storming the Island of Hell, where Big Bad Dr. Hell had his Super Villain Lair. Happens again in Mazinkaiser.
• Mobile Suit Gundam, with the assault on Zeon's fortress "A Bao A Qu" during the final episodes.
  • Repeated in a number of other series including the assault on Libra in Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, the assault on Jachin Due in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, and the assault on the Innovators' mothership, the Celestial Being, in Mobile Suit Gundam 00.
• Happened in Monster Rancher when Genki and the gang stormed Naga's castle. Notable in that Naga was not the Big Bad of the series, just the last remaining CoDragon.
• Episode 26 of My Bride is a Mermaid is a hilariously over the top mission into a noble's castle in order to rescue Sun.
• My-Otome's last episode, where the "castle" is Garderobe Academy (which had already been stolen from the good guys).
• In Naruto Shippuden, during the Sasuke and Sai arc, Team Yamato storms Orochimaru's underground hide-out to rescue Sasuke, but it fails. Sasuke himself does this later with his own Quirky Miniboss Squad, storming the Five Kage Summit. He nearly dies — five times. In order: Jugo and Suigetsu have to save his ass from Darui's Genjutsu blitz; Gaara saves him when he's about to be decapitated (or at least have his chest compressed) by A, the Raikage; then Zetsu saves him when he's nearly melted by Mei Terumi, the Mizukage; finally, Tobi saves him right as he's about to be atomized by Onoki, the Tsuchikage. It was all so satisfying when he was kicked off his high horse.
• In Negima! Magister Negi Magi, Magic World arc concludes in Ala Alba with its allies (Mana, Takane, Mei, Ariadne girls and others) storming Gravekeeper's Palace.
• One Piece:
  • The Enies Lobby fight. They work their way up a whole Sorting Algorithm of Evil, starting with Marines, moving up to Cipher Pol agents, then to the Watchdog Unit, two giants, the Just Eleven Jurymen, Three-Headed Baskerville, and finally CP9 themselves. Whew.
  • The Impel Down arc. Not-at-all-Short summary: Luffy sneaks into Impel Down to save his brother, and meets several of his old enemies, such as Mr. 3, Buggy, and the bizarre Mr. 2 Bon Kurei. They use a combination of fighting and stealth while making their way to level four of the prison, until the warden poisons Luffy and leaves him for dead on a really cold floor... until both Bon Kurei rescues Luffy, then nearly freezes to death himself, and are miraculously rescued by Emporio Ivankov. He (at that time) cures Luffy, who eats an inhuman amount of food. Luffy and Ivankov start their second attempt at storming the castle, rescuing two of the Shichibukai, one of which is a former enemy of Luffy's. With the help of several okama and prisoners they rescue along the way they rip through Impel Down in a combination of an all-out brawl, a prison riot, and panicked fleeing. Around the midway point, a second assault occurs on the same prison, when Blackbeard betrays the Marines and breaks into it to recruit some prisoners for his crew.
  • The Wano Arc; The plan from the beginning is to attack Kaido's fortress on the island of Onigashima during a holiday called the Fire Festival, where Kaido's forces will be celebrating and thus their guard will be down. The first two acts are about building up the manpower needed for such an assault. In the third act, the raid begins as a quiet infiltration as all of the Alliance's forces get into position for their ambush.
  • The movie Strong World climaxes with the Straw Hats storming Shiki's fortress to rescue Nami and stop Shiki's plan to destroy the East Blue.
• In Princess Mononoke, San and her wolf "brothers" storm the heavily-fortified Irontown in order to assassinate Lady Eboshi, as retaliation for their mother, Moro, being shot by Eboshi's gunners. It works surprisingly well for San once she's over the town's walls, but she's easily trapped by Eboshi. Luckily for everyone involved there was a third actor there to untangle the mess...
• Happens in Read or Die, and twice in R.O.D the TV.
• This is usually the general set up for the seasonal climax of Sailor Moon. After an entire story arc of dispatching the monster of the day and having the occasional skirmish with the Big Bad, the senshi would track down their headquarters and go to them for the final battle.
• Shakugan no Shana:
  • Shana and Wilhelmina storm Seireiden in the first season finale to rescue Yuji.
  • In the third season, Khamsin Nbh'w and Rebecca Reed storm it again to rescue Shana.
• Slayers: In the OVA the Chrazy Chimera Plan has 11 Naga the White Serpent's storming the fortress where Lina is being held captive. Made plausible by the fact that there were only two defenders, who knew they were against a powerful sorceress who had bonded with the ten clones created to stop her, and whose laughter made defense impossible. They did the sensible thing and fled the approaching devastation.
• Soul Eater has done this 3 times so far. The first was the Baba Yaga Castle arc. The cast later attacks Noah's hideout. And the third being the Moon itself.
• Tenchi Muyo!:
  • The first villain arc ends with a sequence in which Tenchi, Ryoko, and Mihoshi storm Kagato's flagship to rescue Ayeka.
  • In the second villain arc, Tenchi, Ayeka, and Mihoshi storm Dr. Clay's ship to rescue Ryoko and Washu (although Washu was only there to mess with Dr. Clay).
  • The TV series climaxes with a multi-pronged assault on Jurai (first the planet, then the palace) to remove Kagato from the emperor's throne. And rescue Ayeka.
• Each of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann's four arcs ends this way. The "castles" of the first three each become the good guys' headquarters for the next arc.
• Happens three times in the final arc of 20th Century Boys: firstly, when Kenji and co storm the 'castle' of Moroboshi's killer, and twice later on when the resistance storm Friend's tower. The second time is much easier for them seeing as how the guards have all lost their morale.
• YuYu Hakusho: Yusuke, Kuwabara, Kurama, and Hiei storm Gonzou Tarukane's stronghold to rescue Yukina who happens to be Hiei's sister.

Arts

• The Bayeux Tapestry: Several English motte-and-bailey castles are depicted being attacked by the Normans. While this undoubtedly happened on very few occasions in Real Life, it's used in the tapestry as a symbol of the Normans conquering more and more English territory.

Comic Books

• Beast Wars: Uprising: In the climactic story, "Derailment", the Vehicon Apocalypse presses Lio Convoy and the Resistance to throw everything into breaching through the heavy defenses of Builder territory, getting to the Builder Council and make them surrender, regardless of the heavy casualties this will (and does) incur. It goes wrong when the Vehicons just turn on the Builders as well, and Lio has to storm their control hub, the Grand Mal, instead.
• Black Moon Chronicles: Castle and city sieges usually amount to thousands of soldiers storming the gates and killing anything in sight. Having sorcerers, dragons, giants, and other huge war beasts helps a lot.
• In Final Crisis, after months of slowly falling to Darkseid and his forces, every free superhero teams up into one huge army and storms Bludhaven, where Darkseid's main base is. Superman himself is not part of this assult, but he arrives later and storms Darkseid's actual base, the Command-D bunker, single-handedly. To find Batman dead and Darkseid dying.
• In The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones #28, Indy partners with a Cossack band to assault the fortress of an evil Russian count. While the majority of the Cossacks stage a frontal assault on the stronghold, Indy and small group of handpicked allies sneak in through an otherwise inaccessible approach to retrieve the MacGuffin: a pair of gold plated revolvers award to Buffalo Bill Cody by the Czar of Russia.
• Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers (Boom! Studios):
  • By Issue 7, Billy is trapped in Rita's prison dimension and Rita herself has occupied the Command Centre. The Rangers take advantage of this by piloting the Dragonzord to the moon to attack Rita's palace, which has a portal they can use to rescue Billy.
  • During the final issues of the Shattered Grid event, the remaining Rangers split into two teams to try and deal with Drakkon and his army. One group goes to take down a tower that allows Drakkon's Ranger Sentries to use the stolen Ranger powers across the multiverse, while the second group storms the moon base in Drakkon's universe to rescue Rangers that have been captured.
• In The Smurfs story "King Smurf" (and its Animated Adaptation), the rebel Smurfs do this to the Smurf Village when King Smurf orders his Smurfs to build a high fence around it.
• In Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
  • The Freedom Fighters attack Eggman's bases on a semi-regular basis, but the most climatic one was in issues 199-200, where the assault on his New Robotropolis base ends with Eggman having a Villainous Breakdown and being usurped by Snively and the Iron Queen.
  • The climax of the Shattered World Saga sees the Freedom Fighters carry out a two-pronged attack, on both the Death Egg and Eggman Land.
• Superman:
  • In H'el on Earth, after H'el takes over the Fortress of Solitude, Superman calls in the Justice League to help take it back.
  • In the climax of Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man, Superman and Spider-Man assault Lex Luthor's space base.
  • Two for the Death of One offers a villain versus villain example when Satanis forces his way into Syrene's fortress to stop her from gaining immense magic power.
  • In The Supergirl from Krypton (2004), Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Big Barda assault Apokolips to rescue Supergirl.
  • In Superman vs. Shazam!, Mary Marvel and Supergirl exploit Karmang's being distracted with the battle between Superman and Captain Marvel to attack his castle.
  • In Starfire's Revenge, Supergirl looks for, finds and breaks into the titular villain's European lair.
  • Death & the Family: Supergirl and Gangbuster sneak into the Insect Queen's hive lair to defeat her and rescue her victims.
  • The Plague of the Antibiotic Man: Superman and Supergirl find Amalak's mobile space base as tracking down a trail of particles left by a teleportation beam, and they swiftly smash their way into the ship's deck.
  • The Earthwar Saga: When Brainiac 5 predicts the Legion of Super-Heroes will be unable to prevent the Khunds from invading Earth, an angry Element Lad decides that Brainy, Superboy, Sun Boy, Colossal Boy and himself will take the fight back to the Khunds' homeworld.
  • The Dominator War: Since the Dominators have turned all machines against humanity and are taking over Earth, the Legion of Super-Heroes invades their homeworld.

Fan Works

• As of the beginning of the Bleach fic Winter War, Seireitei has been occupied by Aizen's forces for some time. Naturally, once things get underway, retaking the city is one of the heroes' first priorities. At the same time, a smaller group is sent into Hueco Mundo.
• The Immortal Game:
  • After the Royals manage to invade their base, the Loyalists retaliate by attacking the royal palace so the Mane Six can defeat Prince Empyrean as part of a larger plan to restore Celestia's power and draw out Titan for what they hope will be the Final Battle. That last part doesn't work out that well.
  • The Battle of the Everfree is primarily focused on the Loyalists storming Titan's Citadel in the heart of the titular forest.
• Jewel of Darkness: The Jump City arc ends with The Starscream leading the Titans to Midnight's lair, allowing them to catch her off guard. When the battle is over, Slade appears to drag the badly-wounded Midnight away and the base self-destructs.
• Clan Gully and their comrades had to attack Khamja's base in Grazton to save Baron Beltorey and Cid during the Grazton Arc of The Tainted Grimoire.
• At the climax of Legend of Zelda: Rings of Dualty's first act, Hyrule Castle is infiltrated by not just one faction, but two, one being the (more) usually-heroic main character. It goes pretty well thanks to lazy guards and a distraction.
• Pops up a few times in the My Hostage, Not Yours trilogy:
  • The climax of The Revenge of Player 2 occurs as Dib and Zim attack Iggins' lair in order to save a brainwashed Gaz.
  • Twice in The Inevitable Takeover — first, Dib and Tak lead the Group in attacking Zim's base in order to stop his wedding to Gaz. This fails, since not only does Gaz not want to be saved (and she gives Dib a pretty brutal Hannibal Lecture to prove it), but Zim completely kicks Tak's ass.
    
    The second instance occurs at the climax, as the Swollen Eyeballs (who have forcibly drafted Dib and Tak by this point) launch a full-scale assault on Zim's European base, which happens to be an actual castle.
• The Final Battle of My Little Avengers occurs when the Avengers sneak into Canterlot Castle to confront Loki and the Dark Avengers, who have occupied it.
• Reconstructed in The Night Unfurls. Yes, a direct assault on properly built and manned fortifications is impractical at best and suicidal at worst, but for a series that puts decent weight on the importance of pragmatism in warfare like The Night Unfurls, it does manage to make this trope work somehow.
  • The infiltration of the Black Fortress is the focus of the first arc, with a few differences in how it's played out compared to instances that plays the trope completely straight. Rather than going through the main gate, a fact that Kyril lampshades to be a bad idea, the Black Dogs enter the fortress via a secret passage/culvert that they can access thanks to their resident mage Kin. The remastered version expands a bit more on this plan, noting that the manpower they have is only enough for a surgical strike to the Dark Queen, which explains why they don't opt for waiting to starve the enemies out. Other differences include how the one residing in the fortress is actually not the Big Bad, and that the whole event does not takes place during the story's climax (assuming that there is one). As for other reasons/assumptions on why the "sit through The Siege" tactic is not used, Garan's foul climate would put the Black Dogs at a disadvantage should they stay for a prolonged period. Meanwhile, said fortress is mentioned to have superior supplies and resources, making this option more obsolete. On the other hand, the Black Dogs have a One-Man Army on their side, which obviously makes infiltrating the fortress an easier, more viable task.
  • Chapter 22 features the attack on the Malys Estate, which essentially boils down to "good guy army attacks bad guy's home base"... except that the "home base" is an estate, NOT a castle. Sure, there are Elite Mooks defending the place, but they are insane mutants who only know to rush towards people. With a good formation, good morale, experience, and three heavy hitters, everything within the Malys Estate is wiped out, and said estate is stormed with little trouble.
• The Pony POV Series has this as the title of one chapter in the Dark World arc. Specifically, the one where the Dark World Elements of Harmony do exactly as the name suggests and begin their attack on Discord's castle.
  • The climax of the Shining Armor Arc has the Allied forces under Shining's command assault and fight through multiple Hooviet strongholds.
  • At the climax of the Wedding Arc, the Mane Six, Cadence, their friends, and the large army's worth of allies they're built up from the residents of Canterlot assault the royal castle, where Chrysalis has barricaded herself with her remaining forces.
• Queen of All Oni features a rare villain-on-villain example. When Evil Sorcerer Lung captures Jade's astral form and tries to torture her into serving him, her Shadowkhan Dragons Left and Right track down his fortress (with some anonymous aid from Tarakudo), and proceed to curb stomp everything he puts in their way.
• Friendship Is Aura: Lucario, the Mane Six, and Luna, head to the Gates of Tartarus in order to rescue Celestia. Though Lucario and Luna end up being the only ones to actually enter, since the Mane Six are needed to prevent any more of Lord Tartarus' Mooks from escaping.
• The heroes of Advent Crossover Crisis attempt to pull this on the tower where a group of villains have collected. Unfortunately, by the time they get there, the tower is almost empty...
• In the Facing the Future Series, Team Phantom launch an invasion on the Guys In White's headquarters in order to save a captured Danielle. The task is made easier with the help of a couple of Jack's failed inventions.
• MLP Next Generation: Know Fear! : After Sunny Skies' death, Starburst becomes so enraged at the war and all the pointless death that she singlehandedly assaults the griffon capital and goes after Emperor Stratus himself personally. She actually comes within a hairsbreadth of killing him in cold blood, until his Evil Gloating makes her realize she's become no different from him. And then Nox/Shadow Wing kills him anyway to make him a martyr and frame Star.
• Child of the Storm:
  • Chapters 42/43, while entirely offscreen, have SHIELD enacting Operation Overlord to wipe out most of HYDRA's bases.
  • The following chapter has Dresden and Ward, later joined by Sif, attacking Gravemoss's lair in the Paris catacombs.
  • In Chapter 75, Excalibur, the few Avengers not incapacitated, and several other heroes gathered by Fury, launch a full scale attack on HYDRA's main base. Meanwhile, Doctor Strange sends Harry and his friends in to rescue Steve, Tony, and Bruce.
  • In Chapter 10 of Ghosts of the Past, the Avengers and a few key allies assault the Red Room's base in the Nevernever in order to rescue Harry and Carol.
• The climax of Cinderjuice sends BJ on a Roaring Rampage of Rescue through the Fairy Godfather's castle. He knows it's probably a Suicide Mission, since he's been Brought Down to Normal, but he's going in anyway because his Morality Chain is in danger.
• The second to last chapter of I Against I, Me Against You involves the heroes storming the Mother of Invention to save Twilight/the Ancora A.I., forcing them to fight through countless Freelancer agents, what's left of the Whitewater soldiers including Gilda (now with magical A.I.s), and culminating in a duel between Twilight and Sunset Shimmer before the ship goes down.
• The New Adventures of Invader Zim: In Episode 17, Tak and Tenn break into Zim's base in order to steal the Meekrob crystal from him, with Team Save Earth using the resulting fight as a diversion to sneak in and do the same.
• An Unsung Song:
  • Several of the Careers' attacks on tributes, including the Alliance of the Mockingjays and the District 7/8 Alliance.
  • Additionally, Kizzy's plan to steal the book from the Careers.
• At the climax of the second arc of Hellsister Trilogy, Supergirl and several more heroes storm Darkseid's stronghold to stop him from speaking the Anti-Life Equation and enslaving the entire universe forever.
• Elysion: Akihiko, Junpei, and Aigis break into the Kirijo Estate at the same time as the Investigation team. Bonus points to Souji and Yosuke for storming said castle armed with only two knives and a golf club while everyone else already had their Personas by that point
• In a Discworld tale by A.A. Pessimal, Assassin Miss Alice Band and a small party recapture a castle simply by observing that a small hitherto unregarded postern gate is used by the garrison as a convenient means of sneaking out to the nearby pub. to make it easier to get in after closing time, they leave the postern gate unlocked. Alice takes advantage of this to get her assault team inside the castle. Meanwhile another assassin with a fondness for explosives has hitched a lift in on the pillion of a witch's broomstick; airlifted in, assassin, witch and a satchel of handgrenades do their work from the other end.
• In Black Cat: New Bounty, Eve is trapped in an abandoned castle, locked away with the evil Doctor and it's up to Ichigo to save her.
• In the second chapter of Dance with the Demons, Batman and the Outsiders assault one of lairs of Ra's Al Ghul. They've just taken the guards out when they hear Ra's welcoming them over a speaker.
• Inner Demons: After Queen!Twilight takes Canterlot castle as her own, Applejack sneaks in in order to rescue Rarity, and when it looks like their escape attempt is going to fail, the other Element bearers bust in to save them. But a true castle storming doesn't occur until Applejack talks Lezard into sneaking her in again to confront Queen!Twilight, and the others all come along to keep her from getting herself killed. By the time everything is over, Trixie is dead and Queen!Twilight's gone One-Winged Angel and fled.
• The J-WITCH Series:
  • When the heroes go to rescue Jade from Tarakudo's corruption in "Return of the Queen", they simply burst into Phobos' throne room through the roof because they reason that after all the times they've entered the castle by sneaking in, the villains won't expect them to assault directly.
  • "Twilight of Darkness" sees the canonical storming of Phobos' castle by the Rebellion and Guardians, now with the J-Team and Section 13 added in.
• In Shazam! fanfiction Here There Be Monsters, Captain Marvel figures out Dr. Sivana's HQ's location and tries to assault the place, but he is defeated and captured. Later Mary Marvel and Captain Marvel, Jr. try to sneak into the place, and they suffer the same fate.
• A Moon and World Apart: Chapter 25 has an army of rebellious police officers, led by their captain, attempting to storm Canterlot Castle, overthrow the Royal Guard's Captain Flash Sentry, and "rescue Princess Celestia from the corruptive magic of those accursed traitors from the moon", even to the point of attacking Celestia herself when she arrives and orders them to stand down. Flash, joined by Lunarian sergeant Nightingale, responds by leading his guards in fighting back.
• The Mountain and the Wolf: After Daenerys' and his own assumed death, the Wolf reappears to make a demand of the kingdoms of Westeros and Grey Worm: That they bring their combined forces to attack him, and makes it clear he will not tolerate them surrendering to him to get out of fighting. Though he doesn't say where he is, the heroes quickly figure out he's in Harrenhal, the single biggest fortress in Westeros.

Films — Animation

• Cars 2 first did this with an oil rig in the Pacific Ocean, and later on with a casino in Italy.
• In Frozen (2013), Hans and Weselton's guards storm Elsa's Ice Palace to bring Anna back. While they couldn't find her, they did successfully captured Elsa and confine her to the dungeons, with Hans attempting to reason with her in regards to the Endless Winter.
• In Kung Fu Panda 2, an epic battle between, Po, the Furious Five, Shen and his army begins shortly after the heroes are brought before the Shen's cannon thanks to the efforts of Viper picking the lock on Tigress's cuffs with the end of her tail, which involves the cannon being destroyed, Shen revealing that he has a TON of more cannons, and the tower singlehandedly being brought down in the process.
• The Powerpuff Girls Movie: The eponymous girls may hold the record for fasting storming ever after they realize that not only has Mojo Jojo escaped to his volcano-top lair amidst the chaos of them fighting his superpowered primate army, but he's kidnapped the Professor (their dad) to boot. A series of big, intimidating barricades lock into place to keep them out...and they rip through them in seconds like they're paper. Unfortunately, the villain has a backup plan to keep them at bay that's much more effective.
• Shrek 2: During the climax, Shrek and his friends need to crash the ball in order to prevent Prince Charming, who is masquerading as Shrek, from kissing Fiona, which will activate the love spell slipped into her tea and cause her to fall in love with him. In order to get past the moat and its small army of guards mounted atop the castle walls, they visit the Muffin Man, who crafts them Mungo, a gigantic gingerbread man, all while Jennifer Saunder's absolutely blood-pumping, kickass cover of "Holding Out For A Hero" by Bonnie Tyler plays in the background.
• Strange Magic: Marianne fights her way through the goblin infested Dark Forest and smashes through the skylight of the Bog King's castle to save her sister.

Films — Live-Action

• This is how the legend of The 47 Ronin ends, so every film version ends the same way.
• The climax of The Accountant (2016) has Wolff attacking the mansion of Lamar Blackburn, who is both a Corrupt Corporate Executive and the movie's Big Bad.
• Near the end of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, Buckaroo, the Hong Kong Cavaliers and some Blue Blaze irregulars assault Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems to recover Penny Priddy and the Oscillation Overthruster from the villainous Red Lectroids.
• The climax of Aliens has Ripley taking a level in badass and loading up her weapons to launch a one-woman raid on the Xenomorphs' hive to rescue Newt.
• Appropriately, the Austin Powers movies follow suit: International Man of Mystery ends with Kensington leading British forces to Dr. Evil's lair, while the The Spy Who Shagged Me ends with Austin infiltrating Dr. Evil's moon base, and Goldmember has Austin (with a little more help) invading Dr. Evil's underwater lair.
• The Avengers (1998). Steed and Mrs. Peel infiltrate Sir August's base in order to stop his evil plot to control the weather and end up fighting The Dragon and Sir August himself.
• At the end of Bad Boys II, the titular bad boys and a team of volunteers storm the Big Bad's mansion in Cuba to rescue Marcus's sister and Mike's girlfriend (same person). They have to hurry, though, as the drug lord has friends in the Cuban government, who will send the Cuban army after them.
• The Heroic Bloodshed film A Better Tomorrow 2 ends with the three remaining heroes going on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge through a whole mess of mooks at the Big Bad's mansion.
• Beverly Hills Cop has Big Bad Victor Maitland's Beverly Hills mansion as the castle, the would-be Love Interest as the Damsel in Distress, and a hilarious shootout between the heroic cops and the mooks.
• In Big Trouble in Little China, Jack and Wang Chi drink Egg Shen's magic potion and lead a group of warriors in an attack on Lo Pan's underground lair before he marries their girlfriends as part of an evil ritual.
• Happens at the climax of all three Blade Trilogy movies (except the first, where Blade fails and is captured; the Final Battle happens elsewhere)
• Commando: John Matrix single-handedly assaults the mansion headquarters of a crooked crime lord planning a coup in South America, slaughtering dozens of henchmen in order to rescue his kidnapped daughter.
• The climax of The Dark Knight Rises kicks off as Batman and the Gotham PD assault City Hall, which Bane and his mercenary army have taken as their headquarters. This includes the Bat swooping in and destroying one of Bane's commandeered Tumblers, followed by an epic shot of the cops charging forward, kicking off the fight.
• The climax of The Dark Tower (2017) sees Roland assaulting Walter's base in New York and mowing down his army of Mooks in order to defeat Walter for good and rescue Jake.
• Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: The ape assault on the human tower is essentially this. The apes take a lot of casualties since the humans are fighting from cover against an open-air cavalry charge, but the apes turn the tide once they can get past the initial blockade.
• DC Extended Universe:
  • The Final Battle of Justice League has the eponymous League (Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, the Flash, Cyborg, later joined by Superman) storming the base of Steppenwolf in a Russian Ghost Town to prevent him from activating the Mother Boxes' Unity.
  • In Zack Snyder's Justice League, the same battle is much richer in action setpieces.
• The climax of Enter the Dragon plays with this trope slightly by having the force that attacks the villain's base be released prisoners kept on that base.
• The Equalizer 3: After Vincent threatens the neighborhood once again, McCall decides to cut the bullshit by infiltrating his mansion, killing Vincent's bodyguards one by one before overdosing the boss himself with his own drug and watch him die a slow and painful death.
• The climax of The Expendables involves infiltrating and blowing up General Garza's palace.
• In The Fighting Prince of Donegal, the Final Battle consists in the retaking of the O'Donnell castle at Donegal from English soldiers by a coalition of Irish clans led by Hugh O'Donnell. It's helped by Hugh knowing the castle very well, since he grew up there.
• In G.I. Joe: Retaliation Colton and Jaye attack the Cobra-controlled Presidential retreat to save the real President.
• Glory climaxes with the charge at Fort Wagner. The main characters all die in the charge however.
• Guardians of the Galaxy (2014): The Dark Aster is a castle in the sky.
• The climax of Hardcore Henry sees Henry and Jimmy and Jimmy's remaining clones assaulting Akan's headquarters in order to take him down and rescue Estelle.
• Hero (2002): The King of Qin fears that everyone is out to get him. He's right. We eventually get a flashback to when a battle-couple tried to kill him. By cutting right through his army and storming his palace, by themselves. To awesome music. Observe.
• Double subverted in His Kind of Woman: the hero's single-handed attempt to Storm the Yacht and does not go well at all, with him being captured by the crew within minutes of getting on board. The second attempt, which has police assistance, goes somewhat better.
• In Hot Fuzz, the cops storm a grocery store.
• The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 finally shows the raiding of the capitol.
• In Like Flint. Flint storms the Z.O.W.I.E. missile base with an army of scantily-clad women. Their plan: "Operation Smooch". They overcome the male guards by seducing them with sexual flirtation, when that doesn't work, beating them up.
• At the end of In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, Farmer storms the Big Bad's fortress to kill him and rescue his wife... alone, with the king's army and a magus providing distractions. Why? Because he's Jason Statham, that's why!
  • He gets in through an unguarded air shaft at the top, because nobody would think of building a rope bridge or go in Batman-style, right?
• Most of the James Bond films end this way.
  • Dr. No, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Diamonds Are Forever, The Man with the Golden Gun, The Spy Who Loved Me, For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, The Living Daylights, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day all end with James Bond gearing up and assaulting a known enemy base that very definitely contains the major villain. Quantum of Solace has a more subdued version in the form of a hotel, though it has the bonus of containing two villains.
  • Live and Let Die. A one-man version. Near the end of the film Bond infiltrates Kananga's poppy fields and blows them up with incendiary bombs, attacks the voodoo village to save Solitaire, then sneaks into Kananga's underground base below the village.
  • Moonraker ends with an assault on Drax's Space Station by U.S. Marine astronauts with laser weapons. Bond was already inside the station when it occurred.
• The Last Castle is actually an interesting reversal of the trope. The titular castle is a metaphor for a US military prison, and the entire plot is centered around the prisoners storming the castle from within in order to take it.
• The Final Battle in London Has Fallen has Banning along with a team of SAS and Delta Force soldiers attacking a heavily fortified terrorist hideout where President Asher is taken hostage.
• Used realistically in The Lord of the Rings. The orcs storm castles on three different occasions. The orcs only ever get as far as they do because they vastly outnumber the defenders, occasionally have superior equipment to break down barriers, and soak up a huge amount of casualties just to achieve victory, not that they care about individual lives. Even then, they only manage one victory and lose twice (Osgiliath, Helm's Deep and Minas Tirith, respectively). And they only lose due to reinforcements for the defenders. In another instance, Frodo and Sam are the ones actually doing the storming, but all the fighting is done by the diversionary force led by Aragorn.
• The Matrix franchise:
  • The Matrix: At the start of the climax, Neo and Trinity plan on storming a secure military building where Morpheus is being held captive.
  • The Matrix Reloaded revisits the trope as Neo storms the Source. In a twist, the place he reaches isn't the Source per se, but he does meet an antagonistic character there.
  • The Matrix Revolutions: Inverted with the machines attacking and invading Zion just before Neo makes the deal that saves humanity.
• This happens twice in Max Payne movie, once to get into a bad guy's stronghold and once to shoot a lot of people and maybe do something about revenge. But mostly to shoot people.
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail:
  • Subverted: the knights are gearing up to storm "ze outrrrrageous" French guy's castle... and end up getting arrested. The End.
  • They also attempted to storm the French Castle before going on Let's Split Up, Gang!. However... a rain of livestock caused them to...
    Arthur: RUN AWAAAAYYY!!!
  • Also, when Lancelot assaults the Swamp Castle. By himself.
• The New One-Armed Swordsman ends with the titular hero on his Roaring Rampage of Revenge over his deceased friend by storming the Tiger Mansion, hideout of all the villains, in a lengthy action scene (some 12 minutes long!) leading across a graveyard, a pagoda, a bridge and the mansion itself, with the hero killing at least 90 enemies before backtracking to the bridge to face his main nemesis.
• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time opens with the Persian army storming a fortified city. It's a subversion, however, because Dastan notes that his brother, who's leading the charge, is an idiot who only knows how to attack from the front and would have sacrificed a lot of soldiers just to get inside. Dastan instead sneaks over a poorly guarded wall with his small group and opens the gates on that side, allowing the army in with a minimum of casualties.
• The Princess Bride, in which Westley, Inigo Montoya, and Fezzik are enthusiastically sent off by Miracle Max and his wife, Valerie, to storm Humperdinck's castle.
  Miracle Max: Have fun storming the castle!
  Valerie: [quietly, to Max] Think it'll work?
  Miracle Max: [quietly, to Valerie] It would take a miracle.
  Both: [enthusiastic again] Buh-bye!
• In Prince Caspian, the Narnian forces attack the Telmarine castle. Since it happens in the middle of the film, it was doomed to fail from the start. This is a major expansion on the book, where the idea was merely suggested by Reepicheep.
• The Professional: Mathilda tracks Stansfield's crew to their precinct and infiltrates it with the intention of taking her revenge. She fails to accomplish this task and seems on the verge of being charged with some serious offenses, but luckily Léon shows up to take out Willi Blood and Neal and saves his apprentice.
• Used in the middle of the story and possibly subverted (as well as inverted) in Ran when the Third Castle is caught completely by surprise and its entire garrison of samurai are massacred with overwhelming musket fire and flaming arrows for good measure.
• A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die! climaxes in a battle scene with Col. Pembroke and his small group of Boxed Crooks attempting to take the 'impregnable' Fort Holman from the Confederates.
• Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves: The climax.
• At the end of Scarface Sosa's mooks storm Tony Montana's mansion.
• We see this about four times in Sin City. Two of those instances occur in the same story.
  • Marv geared up to storm the Farm in order to kill Kevin. A couple scenes later, he's heading to Cardinal Roark's mansion.
  • Hartigan storms the same Farm in order to kill the Yellow Bastard.
  • Dwight and the Old Town girls subvert this by luring the mob out of their building, into the alley out back before attackign them.
• Sneakers climaxes with the good guys storming a toy company. Of course, the "toy company" is a front for The Syndicate.
• Star Wars features this in almost every episode:
  • A New Hope: The Death Star, twice: once to rescue Leia, once to blow the place to bits.
  • The Empire Strikes Back: Inversion. The Imperials storm Echo Base. Later, Luke has to storm Cloud City after the Imperials have taken over and taken his friends prisoner.
  • Return of the Jedi: The Death Star, again. Luke allows himself to be captured and taken aboard in a gambit to save his father, and the Rebels attack the battle station directly.
  • The Phantom Menace: In the climax, the Naboo starfighter fleet attacks The Trade Federation battleship and the rest of the heroes take back Naboo Palace.
  • Attack of the Clones: The Jedi Knights storm the Geonosian arena.
  • Revenge of the Sith: The Invisible Hand, though this one's at the beginning. Inverted later on when the 501st storm the Jedi Temple.
  • The Force Awakens: Rey and co. invade Starkiller Base in order to stop the First Order from blowing up the Alliance's current home planet they fail to save the Alliance but do blow the base up.
  • Rogue One: Three different ways:
    • The eponymous Rogue One team infiltrate The Imperial Archives on Scarif in order to steal the plans for the Death Star, they succeed, just.
    • Additionally, the Rebel Alliance sends a fleet of warships to attack the Imperial fleet and space station orbiting Scarif, in hopes of helping Rogue One's mission. In a David vs. Goliath moment, the outmatched Rebel fleet manages to destroy the entire Imperial orbiting force in one fell swoop, but Blue Squadron is wiped out providing air support for the Rebel commandos fighting on Scarif's surface.
    • And finally: The fleet succeeds in receiving the plans sent by Rogue One, but is mostly destroyed when Darth Vader arrives with his flagship to block their escape. The final scene of the movie is Darth Vader's forces storming the Rebel flagship attempting to recover the plans, only for Princess Leia and Captain Antilles to narrowly escape with them aboard the Tantine IV.
  • The Last Jedi: Finn, Rose, and DJ sneak into the Supremacy in order to sabotage the device that's allowing the First Order to track the Resistance fleet through hyperspace. After this, the final confrontation is the First Order launching an armored assault against a fortified Resistance base on Crait. The Resistance defenders are routed, but Master Luke Skywalker appears and delays Kylo Ren's forces while the Resistance survivors escape.
  • The Rise of Skywalker: Rey, Finn, and Poe sneak aboard Kylo Ren's command ship in order to rescue the captive Chewbacca. Later, during the Final Battle, Finn leads a full attack on that ship in order to cut off the command signal for the armada.
• A Tale of Two Cities: The storming of the Bastille by an angry Parisian mob is a big action set piece. It's the beginning of the French Revolution.
• Tank Girl: Tank Girl, her tank, Jet Girl and the Rippers assault the Water and Power fortress at the end of the movie.
• Subverted and then played straight in Timeline. The French arrive to Castleguard prepared for a year-long siege, exchanging arrows and siege weapon fire with the English. Then Gerard Butler's character blows a hole to the catacombs, allowing the French general and a dozen men to storm the castle from inside. They manage to open the gates, allowing the French army to enter. While, the end result is known, as lampshaded at the beginning of the movie, the battle is still on as the main characters are returning to their own time. At the start of the film, Butler's character is giving a lecture on the siege, according to which, the castle was taken in one night through sheer fury and determination.
• In United 93, the cockpit door eventually gets broken down by civilians, who desperately try to wrestle the controls away from the al-Qaeda terrorists. Since the whole film is a Foregone Conclusion based on the Real Life September 11 terrorist attacks, everybody knows how this will end.
• This is the premise of a splendid battle sequence in the 1958 Kirk Douglas vehicle The Vikings.
• In the ending of the Wanted film, Wesley attacks the Fraternity's hideout, using exploding rats, followed by an ultra-awesome Gun Kata run through a corridor... and then some.
• Willow: The climax has the heroes to attack and capture evil witch Bavmorda's fortress.
• Krull begins with the highly advanced Slayers aliens invading the titular world and assaulting Princess Lyssa's castle.
• Legend (1985): Jack and his friends attack the Lord of Darkness' castle to rescue Lili and an sacred unicorn.
• Labyrinth: The climax has Sarah and her friends to attack Jareth's castle in the center of the labyrinth to rescue her baby brother.

Literature

• The Accursed Kings: In the final book, King John II of France insists on building a monstrous siege tower (against the advice of his generals preferring Boring, but Practical mines or just negotiating) to take a minor fortress, more or less living out his fantasies of being a Crusader at Jerusalem (note that gunpowder artillery is already commonplace by the time the book takes place). The tower is built, loaded with soldiers, pushed up to the walls... and promptly blown apart by cannonfire. The siege ends when the defenders agree to leave in exchange for money.
• The storming of the pool ship at the end of Animorphs.
• Attempted against Sobol's mansion early in Daemon, which doesn't go well. Near the end of Freedom, Daemon operatives carry out another against the headquarters of an anti-Daemon task force.
• The Dresden Files:
  • Proven Guilty ends with Harry, Murphy, Charity and Thomas storming Queen Mab's castle in Faerie to get Molly back. Subverted in that while they have to deal with some forces, they arrive to find that something has already been through and wiped out most of Mab's army...
  • While not always a castle, several other books end with Harry and company raiding the Supervillain Lair, including Bianca's mansion in Grave Peril, the Denarians' island base Small Favors, the meeting of the White Court nobility in White Night, and the Red Court's castle in Changes.
• In Frank Herbert's Dune, after the Harkonnens pull an All Your Base Are Belong to Us, Paul gathers the Fremen and storms the city of Arrakeen using a giant sandworm and atomics (in the film).
• S. M. Stirling's post-apocalypse Emberverse novels feature some castle-storming, but in a subversion it's far more common for both the heroes and villains to do everything they can to avoid storming the other side's castles, because such attacks are so dangerous and time-consuming.
  • In Dies the Fire, local good guys unfamiliar with the idea of a castle send two hundred men against a hilltop abbey manned by a gang allied to Norman Arminger, who is very familiar with castles. The good guys lose twenty dead and over a hundred badly hurt to zero gain. Subsequent attacks fail at the "find anyone who wants to do this" stage...
• In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Voldemort and the Death Eaters storm Hogwarts, killing some 50 people.
• Many examples in The History of the Galaxy, a major one being the desperate assault of the Free Colonies' fleet against the heavily fortified Solar System. The only reason it succeeds is because the admiral in charge of the Earth Alliance defense shuts down most of the robotic systems right before the assault, reasoning that the rebels must succeed for humanity to survive (since he's killed in battle, this is a Heroic Sacrifice). Otherwise, the assault was doomed to fail. Interestingly, the author doesn't focus much on the battle itself but on the consequences, particularly for a young Earth Alliance pilot who has to learn to live in a galaxy controlled by the newly-created Confederacy of Suns, where people from Earth are looked at in disdain.
• In Suzanne Collins' final The Hunger Games novel "Mockingjay". Towards the climax , this is subverted as a vengeful Katniss Everdeen has made her way through a now chaotic Capitol on her way to assassinate President Snow, only for several very sudden explosions to go off outside his mansion, collapsing President Snow's regime, setting her on fire and rendering her unconscious before she can take him down.
• In Death: Eve and Roarke storm Icove's underground chambers in Origin In Death quite impressively.
• In Interesting Times:
  Two Fire Herb: "We must storm the Winter Palace!"
  Lotus Blossom: "Excuse me, Two Fire Herb, but it is June."
  Two Fire Herb: "Then we can storm the Summer Palace!"
• Ivanhoe: Torquilstone.
• The medieval Kudrunlied ends with the storming of the Normans' castle by the armies of Kudrun's fiancé and her relatives.
• In C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Aslan, Lucy, and Susan after his resurrection do not go to aid Peter and the army, but storm the White Witch's castle, to restore to life the statues inside. (Aslan had earlier suggested Peter have a plan to storm the castle in case the Witch decided to fall back to her castle instead of committing to an open battle after killing him.)
• In the post-Apocalypse novel Malevil, Emmanuel and his men make preparations to besiege the lightly-fortified village of La Roque to overthrow the despot priest Fulbert. Unfortunately, the night before they do so the village is captured by a renegade military commander and his army. Inverted in the end as it's the hero's castle that is besieged at the end of the novel.
• Rainbow Magic: Rachel and Kirsty storm Jack Frost's castle fairly often.
• Happens in pretty much every Redwall book where the villain builds or steals themselves a looming castle fortress from which to rule the landscape. Examples include Terramort (Mariel of Redwall), Marshank (Martin the Warrior) and Castle Floret (The Bellmaker) Most of the other books have assorted villains trying to storm either Redwall Abbey or Salamandastron. Subversions include the Kingdom of Malkaniss, an underground fortress, and Kotir, which was flooded and destroyed with siege weaponry instead of stormed.
• The climax of The Sapphire Rose by David Eddings has Sparhawk and company storming an evil temple, in the final battle of their war against the dark god Azash. They do it again in a city with a temple in The Tamuli trilogy to rescue Queen Ehlana and Alean.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: Usually, direct assaults are not a good idea, and they are rarely successful without a truly massive numerical advantage. Stannis Baratheon attempts to take King's Landing in open battle in the second book (and fails because Tyrion burned his fleet down and the Tyrells relieved the defenders), the Wildlings make repeated attempts to storm the Wall in the third book after failing to infiltrate it from the inside (and fail, forcing Mance to bring out his Forgotten Superweapon only to be defeated before he can employ it), and Loras Tyrell is forced to abandon a siege and storm Dragonstone directly in the fourth book. (He wins, but is reportedly almost killed... and may have been horribly wounded by quarrels, maces and boiling oil) and loses a disproportionately large amount of men in the process).
• In The Stormlight Archive, assaulting a fortified city is the only really viable way to take it due to the highstorms, which are incredibly powerful storms that sweep across the continent every week or so and tend to destroy any structures not made of solid stone. These render conventional siege tactics useless. Thankfully, most cities on Roshar are built to shelter from storms first and foremost, rather than to defend against invasion. Invading armies will also have access to Shardplate and Shardblades, which are instrumental in breaking through walls and fortified positions. In addition, there is a good chance that any major city will have at least one Soulcaster (a Magitek device that can turn rocks into food or other supplies), making starving the city out much harder.
• The Sword of Saint Ferdinand: García de Vargas, her brother Diego, their friend and master crossbowman Fortún Paja, and ninety soldiers crawl slowly towards Melgarejo Castle in the deep of the night, get rid of a sleeping sentinel, and taking advantage of a bedsheet ladder left by an escaped prisoner, sneak into the fortress. Caught completely by surprise, the defenders of the castle are swiftly slaughtered while their cowardly leaders flee. It must be added that the group intended to assault another castle, but they decided against it because the garrison being alerted made a successful capture impossible and suicidal, and they guessed that Melgarejo would be an easier target.
• Wizards First Rule, the first book of the Sword of Truth series, has the protagonists storming the villain's castle toward the end. Played with the twist that the villain, who believes himself invincible, lets them walk right in the front door.
• In the Tales of the Branion Realm novel The Granite Shield, Rhys personally breaks into a dozen castles and army camps, usually to kill the commanders and terrify or destabilize the defenders. Justified in that his country doesn't have the strength or equipment to fight a traditional siege.
• The Tough Guide to Fantasyland: If The Siege occurs, it's always ended this way at some point, not just the more safe, realistic method of trying to wait the defenders out until they've starved. Once the walls have been breached after massive bloodshed, the attackers are sure to go all Rape, Pillage, and Burn in the city. Before it the heroes however will have already escaped by Secret Passage to avoid this.
• In the third book of The Tripods series, the kids attack the masters by storming and destroying two of their cities, after paralyzing the masters with alcohol.(the third fails)
• Vorkosigan Saga: The War of Vordarian's Pretendership in the novel Barrayar centered on a siege of Vorbarr Sultana by the loyalist forces led by Regent Aral Vorkosigan against Count Vordarian's attempt to usurp the Imperial throne.
• Warhammer 40,000 Expanded Universe:
  • In William King's Space Wolf novel Wolfblade, when they discover the merchant Pantheus was behind an assassination attempt, they raid his asteroid kidnapping him and destroying it.
  • In James Swallow's Blood Angels novel Deus Sanguinius, Rafen gets on the outside of a shuttle going to the spaceship to inflitrate it. He is the only loyal Blood Angel left, and the ship, which should have been a refuge, is enemy ground.
• In Warrior Cats, the characters will, on rare occasions, attack another Clan's camp instead of just fighting somewhere in the territory. This can be risky, though, as the home Clan knows the best way to defend it, will be fighting more fiercely and desperately to protect the defenseless kits and elders, and the raiding Clan is usually outnumbered. It's worked about as often as it has failed.
• Robert Jordan seems to like this as much as George Lucas, because The Wheel of Time does it a lot:
  • Book 2: Falme.
  • Book 3: The Stone of Tear.
  • Book 5: Caemlyn.
  • Book 7: Illian. Subverted when Sammael runs away, and Rand has to follow him to Shadar Logoth.
  • Book 11: The Shaido camp at Malden.
• In Robert E. Howard's "A Witch Shall Be Born", Olgerd says he can't besiege the city and Conan the Barbarian promises to draw them out for the fight.

Live-Action TV

• 24 has Jack doing this a couple times. The most notable are in the first season where he invades Ira Gaines' hideout to save his family and during the fourth season where he storms the terrorists' hideout to rescue the captive James Heller and Audrey Raines. In the former he was going on pure rage, the latter was because he knew he couldn't wait for reinforcements. On Day 6, he storms the compound kills all the Mooks and hangs the Big Bad. Then his reinforcements arrive.
• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.:
  • In "The Asset", the team infiltrates Quinn's Malta villa to rescue Dr. Hall.
  • In "The Girl in the Flower Dress", S.H.I.E.L.D. attacks the Centipede facility in Hong Kong to rescue Chan.
  • In "The Magical Place", the team attacks the Centipede facility where Coulson is being held, while S.H.I.E.L.D. launches attacks on other Centipede locations worldwide.
  • In "Beginning of the End", the team launches a full scale assault on Cybertek's Centipede headquarters in order to bring down Garrett once and for all.
  • In "The Dirty Half Dozen", the reunited original team infiltrates HYDRA's Inhuman experimentation facility in order to rescue Mike and Lincoln.
  • "Maveth" has a literal example, as SHIELD — with the Secret Warriors spearheading — attack the old English castle where HYDRA is attempting to open the portal to bring Hive to Earth.
  • In "The Team", the Secret Warriors assault HYDRA's primary Elaborate Underground Base in order to save the rest of the SHIELD higher-ups.
  • In "The Man Behind The Shield", SHIELD attacks The Superior's oil rig headquarters to try and rescue the kidnapped Director Mace. It turns out to be a trap, to allow Radcliffe and AIDA to abduct and replace most of the team with LMDs.
  • In "All Roads Lead..." Daisy and May break into General Hale's bunker in order to take her down for good.
• Alias. Just the whole series. Put on a brand new dress, storm a brand new castle/secret lab/secret base/locked room/other thing. Every week. Lather, rinse, repeat. Except when you or some other guy is attacking your castle, of course.
• The "Assault" event from American Gladiators (and the UK version) is like this — the Gladiator is positioned behind a cannon that shoots tennis balls atop a raised structure; the contender must avoid getting hit while running between checkpoints and returning fire with a variety of weapons (firing the weapons at each station gets you a smaller amount of points, with one more awarded for getting to the end and hitting a button without getting hit; hit the target above the Gladiator's head, you get more points and a plume of steam erupts from under the Gladiator).
• The very first episode of Angel had Angel storming Russell Winter's mansion to avenge Tina's death. He later stormed the Wolfram and Hart building a number of times, including once to kill a Senior Parter in Reprise. Angel and his gang later stormed their own base, the Hyperion Hotel, to stop the Big Bad Jasmine at the end of Season 4. At the end of Season 2, Wesley and Gunn lead a storming of an actual castle.
• The Barrier: Near the end of the series, a group of revolutionaries that includes most of the protagonists breaks into the residence of the President who has been running an extremely oppressive dictatorship for the past twenty-five years.
• Battlestar Galactica: Nothing says "Grand Finale" like a massive Cylon doom fortress hidden in an Asteroid Thicket in orbit around a black hole.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer features this most notably in Season 7, where the Scoobies and Potentials charge into Sunnydale High, home of the Hellmouth, and finally bust the Hellmouth open, charging through to fight The First's army head-on. Other notable instances of Storming the Castle are the assault on Glory's ramshackle base with every MacGuffin they could scrounge together and the incursion into the Initiative base. There's also Buffy storming Angelus' mansion in the Season 2 finale. Not to mention the time that Riley and Giles stormed Count Dracula's castle (yes, in Southern California, and yes, they comment on this) to rescue Buffy in the Season 5 premiere.
• In Burn Notice, this happens about every other episode. Sometimes it happens near the beginning of the episode, because Michael needs to get the bad guy's attention in a major way. Sometimes it happens at the end of the episode, especially when Michael needs to rescue Fi or Sam. Either way, it always works, because Michael Weston is the man.
• Cathedral of the Sea has two examples of this trope. The first is a bloody and cruel representation of medival siege warfare. The finale has an angry mob storm the dungeons of the Spanish inquisition to free Arnau and the prisoners falsely accused of heresy.
• In Chuck, quite a few episodes have climaxes with a storming of the criminal's lair, usually to save Chuck.
• Doctor Who has the following examples:
  • The Daleks storming the Game Station in "The Parting of the Ways". They reach the top floor, exterminating everyone besides The Doctor before a Time Vortex empowered Rose intervenes.
  • In "The Sontaran Strategem" and "The Poison Sky", this happens three times. First, U.N.I.T. storm the ATMOS factory, which is then followed by a counter attack by the Sontarans taking it from them and finally U.N.I.T. attacking the factory again with help of the Valiant as air support to drive the Sontarans back out or kill them.
  • "Nightmare in Silver" features an actual castle in a theme park. Not that this does much to slow down an assault by Cybermen.
  • The short "The Last Day" and the episode "The Day of the Doctor" show the beginning and the end of a Dalek invasion of Arcadia, the most fortified city on Gallifrey during the Time War.
• Edge of Darkness: Parodied when the infiltrators stop in the middle of the raid to enjoy a three course meal, with fine wine, cigars and classical music.
• The Firefly episode "War Stories" sees the crew busting Mal out of a psychotic crime lord's space station. The surprise and ferocity of the attack with some tactical adeptness led to a curbstomp of the numerically superior occupants. Probably helped that they had Zoey and Jayne.
• The Gifted (2017): In the Season 2 finale, the Mutant Underground attack the Inner Circle's headquarters in order to prevent Reeva's plans to launch a mass attack on Washington DC.
• Horatio Hornblower:
  • In "Retribution", HMS Renown's crew attack a Spanish fort in the Caribbean. They manage to get in and take over because Hornblower figures out there is an underground tunnel.
  • In "Loyalty", Hornblower and men from the Hotspur have to storm a French battery and a French fort.
• Merlin: This is pretty common on show, but it's always realistically played.
  • Arthur had to storm his own castle to save it from his evil sister Morgana, who'd stormed it herself the episode before and declared herself queen.
  • In the Season 3 premiere, Morgause and Cenred are discussing storming the castle, which Cenred points out is near suicidal, since Camelot is well equipped for a siege and he has only so many soldiers. They only go ahead because they have an ally in the court who summons up an undead army to attack Camelot from the inside. When that fails, he immediately calls it off. Likewise, Merlin is seen stocking up food for the siege, telling Arthur that they could be trapped in there for weeks or months.
  • In the Season 3 finale, Morgause storms the castle and succeeds because the army they rely on is over ten thousand immortal soldiers. Kind of hard to stop that.
  • In the Season 4 finale, Morgana obtains the plans to the siege tunnels and essentially sneaks in with her soldiers.
• Penny Dreadful does this several times:
  • In the first season alone, there are three separate attacks on vampire nests by the heroes — in an opium den in the pilot, on board a plague ship in "What Death Can Join Together", and in the Grand Guignol theater in the season finale.
  • In the final two episodes of Season 2, the heroes storm the Nightcomers' lair, which happens to be in a literal castle (albeit one built to 19th century living standards).
  • In the Grand Finale, the heroes fight their way into Dracula's underground lair in order to rescue Vanessa.
• Power Rangers enjoys doing this, though nowhere near as much as it does All Your Base Are Belong to Us.
  • Mighty Morphin' Season 3: Tommy infiltrates Zedd's base to save Kat and retrieve the Falconzord.
  • In Space features two instances, the first doomed to failure since its mid-season, while in the second the Red Ranger goes in for the final fight on his own while the rest of his team prevents their enemies from All Your Basing Angel Grove.
  • Lightspeed Rescue has the Red Ranger go in to save his kidnapped teammates, doing mass damage in the process. Four episodes later, the few remaining villains invade the Rangers' base.
  • Ninja Storm has 99% of the population of multiple ninja academies kidnapped at season start, and near its end, Cam tries to rescue them and is forced to retreat. In the finale proper, Cam himself is grabbed by Lothor; the Thunder Rangers go to save him and rescue the other ninjas as well.
  • Dino Thunder sees Tommy abducted early on, and the Rangers come to rescue him. The finale involves another invasion of Mesogog's base.
  • Mystic Force: Midseason, The Mentor and two Plucky Comic Relief characters are the ones to infiltrate the Underworld.
  • Jungle Fury has possibly the best uses of this trope in the franchise. The first instance happens halfway through the season when the Rangers' masters get kidnapped and used as energy batteries, so the Wolf Ranger and his father rush in to save them. The second instance involves the Red Ranger, who feels guilty for his own small role in the villain possessing a fellow kung fu student, entering the enemy base in broad daylight and just wreaking complete havoc.
  • Super Megaforce has Troy and Orion hopping into Orion's ship, fighting their way through the Armada, slamming the damaged ship into Emperor Marvo's ship, then fighting their way to the Emperor himself.
  • The penultimate episode of Cosmic Fury takes the season's Knight in Shining Armor motif to its logical end point when Red Ranger Amelia leads her team to the evil Lord Zedd's palace to rescue her true love as well as the friendly monsters who managed to break the mind control spell he was under from the tower prison. The Rangers thoroughly trash the set, but not nearly as much as the forces of evil do themselves. They planned for the Rangers to come to Ollie's rescue and so they rigged the tower to explode and kill all of them. Zenith Ranger Zayto chooses to use the last of his life energy to create a force field, saving the team at the expense of his own life.
• Naturally done a few times in Sharpe, particularly with the great Spanish fortress cities of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz. The novels add some more, like the sieges of Seringapatam and Gawilghur in India.
• In the Stargate SG-1 Season 3 premiere, "Into the Fire", SG-3, -5, -6, and -11 storm Hathor's fortress to rescue SG-1. But they get cut off, then captured on their way back out.
• Star Trek has examples of this. Notables include:
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation ep, "The Best of Both Worlds" features the Enterprise crew boarding the Borg cube twice.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, when they storm their own station to take it back. A good example also includes Jadzia Dax and three old Klingon Dahar masters (all of whom faced Kirk decades prior and survived) storming the compound of the Albino. Two of them don't make it, which is just fine for a Klingon.
  • Star Trek: Enterprise in "Zero Hour" when they board the Xindi Death Star to attempt to destroy it.
• Supernatural: In the penultimate episode of Season 12, Sam leads a group of the remaining American hunters in an assault on the British Men of Letters' base, in a preemptive strike to stop their plans to wipe out the hunters.
• The ultimate goal in Takeshi's Castle which failed in almost every episode.
• This has happened twice in True Blood, the first time being during the Season 2 Finale, when Sookie, Andy, Jason, Bill and Sam enter the Stackhouse property (or at least the land around it) to deal with Mary Anne. Slightly played with though, as this was more of a cautious stealth mission than an all out battle due to Mary Anne's Complete Immortality.
  • Played entirely straight in the finale of Season 5 when Sookie and basically every major character with fighting abilities violently storms the Authority's underground base in an attempt to save Bill from himself as well as put an end to the now extremely corrupt regime.
• Van Helsing (2016):
  • In the first season finale, the Resistance assaults the factory that serves as Dimitri's fortress. While initially successful, by the end of the Season 2 premiere the vampires have turned the tide and succeeded in driving the Resistance back.
  • In the series finale, Vanessa, Jack and Ivory storm the White House in order to confront Dracula, fighting their way through a small army of Delta Force vampires in order to reach her.
• The episode "To The Gates" from the third season of Vikings may have one of the most epic examples in television history. For over a half hour the Norse attempt to storm Paris by attacking at multiple points complete with appropriate siege engines while the Franks and their defenses do everything to throw them back. In the end the Norse learn why storming a castle is generally the very last resort in medieval warfare, and are beaten back entirely with heavy losses. In fact, some of the Norse Red Shirts realized early on what was inevitably going to happen, but their leaders were either too proud, too zealous, too hungry for glory, or just too petty to admit they were headed for defeat. It takes several attempts at treachery and an elaborate ruse before the Norse are able to breach the defenses and loot the city.
• In the second episode of The Wire, "The Detail", Carver, Herc and Prez are hanging out drinking together late one night when they basically decide to do this, driving their department cars right up to the towers Barksdale's organization controls and making a big scene, ostensibly to do field interviews. It doesn't go very well.

Music

• "Storm the Castle" by Jonathan Young is about La Résistance rising up, assaulting the tyrant king's castle, and killing the tyrant.
• "Stürmt das Schloss"^note "Storm the castle" by Tocotronic is a rather metaphoric example, titled because it shortens to "SDS", a political reference.

Myths & Religion

• The Iliad portrays an episode from the ten-year siege of Troy, which also involves the Trojans storming the fortified Greek camp.
• The Nibelungenlied ends with the climactic last stand of the Burgundians, who are holed up in king Etzel's hall and fight off several assaults by the armies of Etzel and his vassals until every one of them except Gunther and Hagen is dead.

Pinballs

• This is the premise of Big Guns, with the player using a pair of BFGs to attack the King Tyrant and rescue the Queen.
• Featured in both Black Knight and Black Knight 2000
• Medieval Madness does this literally, as the player must batter down the drawbridge and smash the gates before a castle can be destroyed.
• The "Ra's Temple" mode in Stargate is this.
• Jersey Jack Pinball's The Wizard of Oz has "Storm the Castle," available if you attempt a Rescue before Dorothy is captured.

Tabletop Games

• Chess: Almost the only option if you castled (pun for once not intended) to different sides.
• Legend of the Five Rings includes siege rules in its Emerald Empire supplement if the players really want, although it notes that sieges are time-consuming, deadly, incredibly boring, and worst of all, often indecisive. Since the Rokugani don't have much in the way of Siege Engines and are usually fanatically loyal, the primary means of attack is to sit and wait. Like in standard mass battles, the GM rolls each "round" to determine which players are hurt or subject to a duel or setpiece encounter, but while a typical battle has rolls every 30 minutes of in-game time, sieges roll every day (and that's a fast siege — long, drawn-out affairs can be up to once a week). Fittingly, the local Big Book of War is rather scathing about the concept.
  As a form of warfare, reducing a fortification has only this to recommend it: after you have participated in a siege for the first time, whether as attacker or defender, many things in life will seem less troublesome.
  — Akodo, Leadership
• The early medieval wargame The siege of bodenburg was based around a siege. If you were playing the barbarian raiders,your goal was to take castle bodenburg from the forces of Count Boden.

Theater

• Older Than Steam: Macbeth ends with a castle storm. Of course, since we have ourselves a Villain Protagonist, he's the one inside when it all falls down.

Visual Novels

• In the Grand Route of Yuri Visual Novel Aoi Shiro, Syouko and Nami storm the titular Blue Castle, which counts as To Hell and Back.
• An Octave Higher has Franz, Elise, Aretha storming the Maison de Bouvoire in order to rescue Frederic from the clutches of Libertad. It happens again in the true ending, when Elise must storm the Libertad-occupied Conservatoire to stop Big Bad Amadeus from executing an important hostage.
• Seinarukana has you and your band of True Companions storming numerous final strongholds of whichever enemies you find on the world you happen to be on.

Webcomics

• The Dogs of war and their french employers assault and storm a well defended airbase in the first chapter of Cry 'Havoc'.
• Girl Genius. Or rather, tricking the guards into thinking you're a new prisoner being sent there as punishment, only to storm the castle from the inside.
• The Order of the Stick:
  • It opens with the titular heroes heading into the Dungeon of Dorukan to defeat an evil lich. In fact, this was the original concept before things got complicated.
  • Later, Xykon has to invade his old tower to win it back from the good creatures that took over in his absence.
  • A couple of arcs later, after getting Drunk with Power from his/her deal with the IFCC, Vaarsuvius attacks Xykon's newest fortress in an attempt to defeat him by him/herself. V gets his/her ass handed to him/her, but still manages to rescue the captive O-Chul and make Xykon lose his phylactery.
• Used several times in Sluggy Freelance, most notably in the story arcs "Vampires," "Dangerous Days," and "That Which Redeems."
• Tower of God: Phantaminum's storm on Jahad's castle. He took on an entire Badass Army. Didn't get a scratch.

Web Original

• Episodes 15-17 of Achievement Hunter's "Let's Play Minecraft". Having absconded the Tower of Pimps, Geoff tells Michael, Ray, Gavin and Jack that he hidden it somewhere and the first one who finds it and takes it back, wins. Midway through the episode, it's revealed that Geoff had hidden it in a fortress he built in the sky. Once they find out where he's hidden, the four attempt and fail to take back the Tower.
  • Episodes 115-116, aptly titled "Storm the Tower", features one team (between Team Lads (Gavin, Michael and Ray) and Team Gents (Geoff, Ryan and Jack)) attempting to get to the top of a large fortified tower and capture the Tower of Pimps within one hour, while the other team attempts to stop them. Surprisingly Realistic Outcome, however, as the Tower's defenses were so intricately designed that in the end neither team were able to get to the top and mine the Tower within one hour (though Team Lads were the closest when Ray successfully captured one gold block).
• Associated Space has several variations on this trope, from Fatebane sneaking into the Executive Mansion to give a mysterious box to the President, to Fatebane rescuing David from his own wedding, to Fatebane and Nazar rescuing David from his mother's mansion.
• Hero House has both examples, with one party laying siege to Castle Doom, while another sneaks inside.
• Legion of Net.Heroes: At the end of a lengthy story arc in which Decibel Dude is framed for the murder of his girlfriend and on the run from everyone, including his partner, he manages to prove that he's innocent and that the murder was faked by his arch-enemy. He announces to the Legion that he's heading off to the villain's headquarters to free his girlfriend and arrest the bad guy, and walks away without looking back. When he gets to the headquarters, he finally turns around to discover the entire Legion is behind him, with his partner in the lead.
• lonelygirl15:
  • Jonas suggests this strategy in the episode "Storm The Castle," but in the end they use a different tactic.
  • The later raid on Pleasant Manor could be counted as a (narrowly) successful castle-storming.
• The Mad Scientist Wars had one of these in Chapter 11, as a threefold plan. Group One pretended to join over, offering someone as a fake bribe, Group Two sneaked in and sabotaged security, and Group Three just charged the gates and blew things the hell up. At least, that was the idea — Group One failed, though the other two more or less succeeded. Then, the chapter's Big Bad, an evil robotic arm, used his master stroke, and everything went to hell.
• On the ninth day of Survival of the Fittest version four, STAR launches an assault on the terrorist HQ and the island, causing a lot of damage and rescuing many of the students. This eventually comes to a head when Danya is shot by Dorian Pello, one of his own men, who then escapes with STAR.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • The series has the heroes and a small army of allies invade the Fire Nation in "The Day of Black Sun." It was a trap.
  • "The Earth King" has the four heroes breaking into the heavily-defended Royal Palace of Ba Sing Se in about four minutes.
  • In the Grand Finale, the Order of the White Lotus storms Ba Sing Se with only about thirty men and liberates it from the occupying army.
• In The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes Captain America, Bucky and the Howling Commandos storm the Red Skull's castle.
• In what may have been meant to be the last episode of Birdman, Birdman and Falcon Seven finally track the Nebulous Evil Organization F.E.A.R. to their base in the Andes, at which point Birdman and Avenger single-handedly storm the place.
• Carmen Sandiego: In the series finale, A.C.M.E. launches a massive raid on V.I.L.E.'s headquarters, arresting all of the faculty and several operatives, sending the rest on the run.
• Castle, the animated adaptation of architectural historian/writer David Macaulay's book, shows in vivid terms just how tough storming a well designed, built and supplied castle could be in medieval times with defenses upon defenses in place to discourage it.
• The first Rose Petal Place special has Rose Petal's friends invading Nastina's castle to rescue her after she's captured and nearly killed.
• Samurai Jack storms Aku's castle in the pilot movie, and has been known to storm other castles belonging to blind archers, gargoyles, water spirits, and others.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil named the final episode of its first season after this trope, which had the titular character team up with an ex-henchman of the Big Bad in order to rescue her best friend. And while she does manage to save him, it is implied that all the destruction that occurred resulted in a case of The Bad Guy Wins.
• Averted in Star Wars: Clone Wars. Obi-Wan and Anakin have been assigned to help out a siege effort alongside the clone army. Obi-Wan, bored out of his mind and soaking wet, asks Commander Cody how much longer it will take for them to take the enemy's position. The commander, cheerfully responds three months, saying they're making good progress, while Obi-Wan moans about how long they've already been there. Then he and Anakin found an underground tunnel to sneak into the city, and take out its shields reactor, allowing the clones to storm all over it.
• Done twice in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003). The first occurs in "Return to New York", where the turtles storm Foot HQ in order to kill The Shredder, and the second in "Enter the Dragons," where the turtles and a shitload of allies storm The Demon Shredder's keep in order to kill him.
• Transformers: Prime: The series finale is all about the Autobots assaulting the Nemesis for a Final Battle, in order to save Ratchet and stop Megatron from using the rebuilt Omega Lock to transform the Earth into a second Cybertron.
• In The Venture Brothers, Spider Skull Island was once a bad guy base until Team Venture captured it. The original owner fled and attempted to initiate a self destruct, but it failed due to faulty hardware.

Real Life

• Real-life cases of Storming The Castle is Older Than Dirt — fortifications with battle damage that are older than 1,000 BCE have been exhumed around the Mediterranean. The Assyrian Empire was one of the first known civilizations to weaponize this trope, by spreading tales of their ability to storm fortifications to frighten cities into submitting peacefully.
• The Roman Empire got extremely skilled at storming fortifications, to the degree that they wrote manuals on siegecraft. The Romans favoured using ramps to take fortifications, as this allowed their infantry to simply walk onto the enemy's walls, and would often take weeks, months or in some cases years to build up their siegeworks while using artillery to wear down the defenders' ability to stop construction. Roman standard proceedure when taking towns was that surrender was permitted until just before the finished ramp touched the walls — after that, no quarter would be given.
• Towards the end of World War One, the British fought the Germans back to the Hindenburg defense positions: a network of barbed wire, gun positions etc. which made the Somme defense, against which the British had struggled for four months and generally suffered greatly, look like a joke. They were intended to be a line on which Germany could hold the British indefinitely, thus enabling peace negotiations from a position of strength. A castle, at least in strategic and symbolic terms, if there ever was one. The British cut through it in three days.
• This was also the Pacific Theater during World War II for the most part, as it generally involved amphibious landings on well-fortified and bitterly defended islands and atolls all the way up until they got to Okinawa, nearly all of which suffered tremendous casualties. They were all stepping stones on the way to eventually invade Japan, an operation that was projected to last another 2 to 3 years and expected to lose over a million casualties. This is perhaps the reason why the Marines raising the flag at Mt. Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima is considered the Corps' best moments (among many), because it evokes the fall of an enemy castle and signals triumph (though there were still about 6 more months before the war would end). This also explains the United States' tactics during the war — a conscious decision was made to avert this trope by bypassing the strongest points of Japanese resistance in favor of less-heavily defended islands and towns that could still serve as stepping stones, and cut Japanese supply lines to the still-garrisoned islands. This is why you never hear of a Battle of Truk, for instance.
• This also also happened when the Allies broke through the Siegfried Line near the end of WWII in order to get into Germany.
• Also the cutting of the Channel Wall on D-Day and the earlier cutting of the Mareth Line in Tunisia.
• The Battle of Seelow Hights was basically the Red Army's attempts to storm the last fortified barrier between itself and Berlin. They didn't do as well as most of the above examples, but they eventually did it. Berlin itself probably counts as an example.
• Look up a little island called Malta. Then look up 'Siege of Malta, 1565'. This trope rarely happens in real life for a very, very good reason.
• During the Battle of Alesia, Julius Caesar wisely recognized this trope, so he avoided it on purpose by building a castle around a castle. His enemies tried to storm his siege wall multiple times and failed, eventually surrendering.
• During the Battle of Chapultepec, Mexican forces were made to defend the military school, which was based on the Chapultepec castle, against the American invaders. They... failed.
• The Battle of Tripoli in the Libyan civil war.
• While stormings of castles and fortified cities were rare in the middle ages, there were a few famous examples such as the siege of Jerusalem during the First Crusade and the failed assault on Damascus during the Second. At Castillon in the final major battle of the Hundred Years' War the English tried to storm a heavily walled and entrenched French position (which was also defended by numerous cannons) and failed.
• With advances of military technology sometimes favouring the attacking side and sometimes the defending side, the frequency with which fortresses could be besieged or stormed successfully rose and fell. A particularly bad time for fortresses was the late 17th century when led by Marshal Vauban the French army perfected siege and bombardment techniques, enabling Louis XIV to take an unprecedented number of enemy fortresses in a much shorter time than had been thought possible.
  • English Civil War was another rather good example of the limitations of castles versus artillery. Most of the remaining intact examples in the UK either missed the worst of the fighting, surrendered quickly or happened to be besieged by a force that was low on gunpowder; when the defenders chose to hold out there tended not to be much left except picturesque ruins.
  • Vauban later wrote books on siegecraft and fortress-building, leading to a revolution in fortification. This led directly to the "star" fort (with low, immensely thick walls angled to minimize the effects of enemy artillery and make it easy to bring friendly guns to bear) and made sieges and fort-storming a bloody business up through the 19th century's Napoleonic wars. Nevertheless breaching with artillery, then storming the breach remained the go-to solution for taking cities since it would be very hard to sustain a siege for any length, especially with the enemy's field army still around. Hence the Storm of Badajoz in the Peninsular War, and others.
• The Battle of Peking during the Boxer Rebellion was this trope almost played straight. The entire city was fortified, and the Eight Nation Alliance was outnumbered by a force several times its size. At the end of the day however, they captured the city and suffered comparatively minimal casualties.
• The Battle of the Alamo: Wikipedia says "Described by Santa Anna as an 'irregular fortification hardly worthy of the name', the Alamo had been designed to withstand an attack by native tribes, not an artillery-equipped army." Yet despite having a numerical advantage of between 7:1 and 10:1, the attackers took over twice as many casualties (wounded and killed) as the defenders when they stormed it.

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Well, the page is over. So long, tropers! Have fun storming the castle!