Team Shot

Here comes The Cavalry.

This is a visual trope: a shot of the main cast of a work whole posed as for a group photograph or portrait, usually against an abstract or "typical" background. Often the shot is "assembled" by sliding or fading individuals or small groups into their places in the composition. While leads will often be in the center where the eye is drawn first, as in the V-Formation Team Shot, unlike it they will be standing close to their best friend/love interest, and the group as a whole is in a rough line, not a V. This is a common way for the opening credits of a work to end.

Team shots are usually restricted to the protagonists of a show, although sometimes the antagonists may appear, either as a small, slightly separate group or as an image above and/or behind the heroes.

Compare Team Power Walk, some versions of the Opening Credits Cast Party, V-Formation Team Shot, "Super Sentai" Stance, and Establishing Team Shot. Also compare One Cast Member per Cover, which can show the entire team over the course of several covers.

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Examples:

Animation

• Mechamato:
  • After the opening sequence introduces Mara, Pian, and Deep one at a time, they are shown as a group, posing for and waving to the camera.
  • The opening credits end with a shot of Amato, MechaBot, Pian, Deep, and Mara in a group pose before displaying the title of the show.

Anime & Manga

• The opening credits of Ai Yori Aoshi ends with a static shot of the main characters in front of the mansion, looking like they're posed for a portrait. Which makes a lot of sense, given the "photograph" theme that runs through both seasons of the series.
• Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040 puts its team shot on top of a moving vehicle.

• Doki Doki School Hours has this with Mika-sensei meeting up with her students.
• Most, if not all Dragon Ball Z openings feature this at the end.
• The opening credits for El-Hazard: The Magnificent World end with a classic Team Shot, as do the various Sakura Wars the Animation OVAs, and Grenadier.
• Fushigi Yuugi offers an unusual variation in that the heroes take up one corner of the screen while two of the main antagonists fill the rest, framing them.

• .hack//Legend of the Twilight Bracelet manga has a page at the end called "Unplugged", showing the players behind the characters standing in a pose like this, including both the antagonists and protagonists. This is also the first time any of their true appearances are shown.
• Hanaukyō Maid Team La Verite: At the end of the opening credits all of the main maid characters and Taro are in a line facing the audience.
• The iDOLM@STER: Several In-Universe, not counting both openings and a few of the endings.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: This is provident throughout the series as there is a pivotal moment in each Story Arc where the main protagonist and their allies stand together for a brief group shot.
• Love Hina Again parodies the trope by building a classic Team Shot with all the girls in front of the Hinata Apartments, and then literally dropping Keitaro into the scene to lay battered and broken on the ground in front of them. Then Naru lands on him, sitting.
• Both supplementary manga from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's and Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS end this way with a photo of the team after beating the tar out of each others in a "mock" battle both times. A third one is used during the "true ending" of the StrikerS manga after the epic battle between Signum and Nanoha, the ex-members of Riot Force Six have an after-party remembering the good times and in the last panel of the manga they take a commemorative photo with the main cast from A's, plus Vivio, Rein and Agito (it's also the only time in StrikerS where Zafira appears in his human form).
• Mekakucity Actors: During the opening credits, with the whole Mekakushi Dan standing in front of a wall covered in graffiti.
• Moldiver's credits end with a Team Shot that shows both Moldivers and their "real" identities as separate figures.
• The end of the My-HiME opening features a good portion of the female cast lined up, including most of the female students, Mashiro and Fumi. The first opening of My-Otome ends similarly. In My-Otome Zwei, the participants in Operation Meteor Breaker pose for a picture after destroying an asteroid.
• One Piece does this in most of its openings. Sometimes used as the closing shot (openings 3, 11, 16, 17 and 18), but usually the final shot is a close-up of the show's alternate logo, or of the crew's pirate flag.
• Outlaw Star's opening, which also serves as a Spoiler Opening as Hilda, a rather important character who doesn't appear in the team shot, dies in the fourth episode.
• Pokémon: The Series is not exempt to this, but special mention goes to the beginning of the Spurt! theme, showing off most of Ash's Pokémon, whether they're still under his care, released, in-training or otherwise.
• Every Pretty Cure series. Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash★Star has some fun with it, having the mascots float by after the pose is struck, with the girls turning to watch them.
• The scene where The Puella Magi Holy Quintet first fight together in Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion, immediately after the transformation sequences is this, as seen here.◊
• Reborn! (2004). Obviously, it's about a group of seven guys (and a girl, but that can be justified) fighting the Big Bad.
• Scott Pilgrim Takes Off: The end of the opening sequence has Scott and Ramona standing by their group friends before charging ahead.

• In Sailor Moon Crystal, CGI group poses of the five senshi in a field of blue flowers with a humongous full moon overhead begin and end the Title Sequence.
• Tiger & Bunny features one at the end of both opening themes and at the beginning and end of the second ending theme.
• Tokyo Mew Mew, including colour-coded spotlights matching the heroines.

Asian Animation

• The intros for Happy Heroes often contain shots of all the heroes standing together as a group.

Films — Animation

• In Turning Red, the poster Abby has for the 4*Town concert features the whole band posed against an abstract background.

Films — Live-Action

• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • The Avengers has two particularly good ones:
    • The first is the shot when the team is fully assembled for the first time. It's an awesome circular panning shot that shows each member standing back-to-back, ready to take care of business.
    • The second comes after Loki's defeat, with Hawkeye taking front and center of this one, aiming an arrow straight at Loki's forehead.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy (2014):
    • It has a Police Line Up as theirs in the first promotional image and first trailer.
    • In the actual movie Drax is absent from the line-up and the first proper team shot occurs during the escape from Kyln, when the door of the control tower opens to reveal them all assembled.
    • They also get an absolutely awesome Team Shot in the climax, sharing and weilding safely the power of the Infinity Stone.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 has a dramatic scene toward the end with a Team Shot against a background of Stuff Blowing Up... which is then Played for Laughs as a piece of debris suddenly knocks Mantis down.
• Return of the Scarecrow: Before heading off into the woods in Josephine's story, the group gets a picture together with the bartender.
• The last shot of the Street Fighter movie features this with all surviving good guys doing their classic Victory Pose.
• The credit sequence for Watchmen — a.k.a. the "The times they are a'changing" sequence — ends on a team shot of the New Minutemen/Watchmen. It's nearly a Bookend, since there's a photo of the original Minutemen about half a minute in when the film title comes up.

Literature

• Shows up in one form or another in at least two Megamorphs Animorphs books.
• RAF pilot turned novelist John Nichol describes a Real Life example in his memoirs, a group photo of the participants in a major annual exercise. After a few years they decided the conventional team shot was getting dull and decided to liven it up a different way each year, getting progressively weirder each time. Nichol was somehow persuaded to don his old POW uniform from The Gulf War – which had unpleasant connotations – while everyone else improvised hilariously unconvincing Arab headdress and pretended to... do something rather unpleasant to him with a Sidewinder missile. Nichol didn't find it very funny, either.
• The first book in the Warrior Cats series has an illustrated edition from Belgium that does this on the cover◊: the featured cats include the protagonist Firepaw and his best friends, the villain (looking menacingly down on everyone else) and his Dragon, several significant ThunderClan cats (including love interest Spottedleaf who's looking at Firepaw and smiling), and a friendly loner.

Live-Action TV

• Appears in Criminal Minds. Most seasons have an opening sequence that ends with this (although a few cut out Garcia and one cut out Rossi, putting that person in a separate box on the side. Season 9 has the team being briefed on a case. The opening sequence always ends with the whole team standing together in front of the title card.
• The Defenders (2017): Matt Murdock, Jessica Jones (2015), Luke Cage (2016), Danny Rand, and Stick stand side-by-side in this pose as they prepare to fight Elektra and other Hand henchmen in the Chinese restaurant. Later on, there's another fight in an underground corridor where it's just Matt, Jessica, Luke, and Danny standing side-by-side preparing for a fight, with Danny's shirt open enough to show his Iron Fist tattoo while Matt is back in his Daredevil outfit.

• House and the "ducklings" do this in the opening sequence of House.
• Present in the opening of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, as the large ensemble cast makes the Team Power Walk from the other series impossible.

Toys

• BIONICLE had at least one such piece of promotional artwork per toy-wave. In some cases, heroes and villains stood side by side if their toys were sold concurrently. Numerous covers and pages on the tie-in comics likewise had these.

Video Games

• ANNO: Mutationem: The main cover features Ann and Ayane together amidst the Post-Cyberpunk city.

• The opening animation for the PS1/DS version of Chrono Trigger features someone taking a photograph of all the playable characters off a table.
• Team Shots are popular among players of MMORPGs, especially in City of Heroes where they are usually taken after the completion of a Trial or Taskforce.
• When playing Defend in Evolve, the climatic final mission of the Evacuation campaign, you get to see one of the original hunters or monsters depending on what side you're playing as the loading image.
• The cover of Fighting Force has this as well as the character select screen.
• Final Fantasy X: The party, all standing around Yuna, when confronting Seymour for the first time.
• Every game in the Galaxy Angel gameverse has the girls of the Moon Angel Wing on the cover.
• Mocked hilariously at the end of the Mad Midget Five's intro in God Hand, where their team pose involves falling on their backs and kicking their legs up into a V. Gene, watching all of the preceding, can only respond with a stunned, "Douchebags!"
• Every box cover in The Legend of Heroes - Trails has a Team Shot of the main cast for each installment.
• The final memory in "Champions' Ballad" DLC for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild ends with a group photo of all the Champions (Mipha wanted to see how the camera function of the Sheikah Slate worked). Afterwords, Kass gives Link a copy of the photo, and Link can hang it in his house on the upper bedroom wall.
• Overwatch:
  • All matches end with a shot of the winning team. This includes 1v1 and 3v3 matches (where it's just the last character you played as in 1v1, and the winning trio in 3v3) and PvE matches (where it shows one of each type of villain if the players lose).
  • Then there's the somewhat infamous one at the end of the "We are Overwatch" short. It's intended to showcase the game's cast all at once (as it was released before the game actually released as part of the game's promotional materials), but as produced a number of headaches for the fandom, as it has an actual canonical place in the Overwatch timeline (it shows Winston's rocket launching, placing it directly after the short "Recall"), but only half of the game's cast was ever in the organization Overwatch, even more have renounced it since it was disbanded, and none of them (except Winston) were actually present for the canonical launching. Most fans just assume that it's not canon and have moved on.
• Win a battle via All-Out Attack in Persona 4, and the party gathers together for a team-shot Victory Pose (that is, everyone does their own victory pose en masse).
• In Phantasy Star Online 2, after completing certain Emergency Quests that pit players against Dark Falz or another powerful boss, all players that participated in the battle will strike a victory pose.
• Sakura Wars:
  • Playfully deconstructed; after every battle, the heroines (and hero) pose for a photo with the tagline "Shouri no POSE, kime!" (Roughly, "Victory Pose, Go!"). Ogami finds this somewhat awkward the first couple of times it happens. Every time new characters are introduced, they also find it incredibly dumb – but a couple of battles later, they're happily joining in. The high-water mark is in the third game, where Ogami is assigned to command a new team of girls – and is left as the only one posing, whilst his new comrades-in-arms recoil in confusion.
    Glycine: Huh? What's that supposed to be?
    Erica: Mr. Ogami, what are you doing?
  • Played straighter in Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love, where each character at the end of their arc ends up being the one who enthusiastically calls for the victory pose.
• Splatoon: Happens at the end of every multiplayer match to show off the victors' emotes. If it was a 100x or 333x Splatfest match, the victors disregard whatever emotes were selected to do a coordinated and much more badass pose instead.

• Team Fortress 2, notably at the end of the "Meet The Team" movies and general promotional artwork. Of course no one character is more important, but they do seem to be arranged to some extent by popularity among players.

Web Animation

• Dreamscape: This serves as the series logo as well, although it features some villains and side characters too.

• Murder Drones: The YouTube thumbnail of episode 3 shows the main three characters standing together in battle-ready stances.

Web Comics

• Because Chiasmata has three groups of four persons (representing Eukarya, Prokarya and Archaea, respectively), so it also has of three of these, here, here and here, althought it is not visible if they're standing in a straight line (persumably, they are). Unique in that their third group shot is interrupted and does not feature the fourth person in that group.
• In Earthsong, we get one of the good guys◊. Then we get one of the bad guys◊. Also has some (presumably unintentional) Rhymes on a Dime.
• An El Goonish Shive guest comic presents the main eight as superheros in a rough line and a filler comic presents them as an all male soccer team with Ellen as a female referee in a straight line.

• Sleepless Domain: In the first chapter, the five Magical Girl Warriors of Team Alchemical strike a flashy coordinated pose following their shared Transformation Sequence.

Western Animation

• Aqua Teen Hunger Force: In the Season 12 intro, the main trio pose during the the theme song.

• The last shot in Gravity Falls usually is this, and Stanford is also Promoted to Opening Titles, although the last shot stays the same.
• In Justice League and its sequel like doing it, for Unlimited it's a seventy-member team shot.
• The opening title for The Legend of Vox Machina has a few of these from several angles. Also features twice in the pilot episode: the first is used as part of an in-universe Theme Tune Roll Call and Played for Laughs; the second is the episode's closing shot, and follows a much more somber scene with the party affirming their intent to slay a murderous dragon.
• The last shot of the opening titles of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic contains one of these that was apparently staged in-universe.
• Occurs twice in the Recess opening title. One of the more famous pieces of promotional artwork for the show has the main six in a group shot as well.

• Chris tries to take a Team Shot photo of the cast in the first episode of Total Drama, the twenty-two teens stand on the dock and smile, only to have Chris repeatedly delay the shot because of technical difficulties ("I left the lens cap on!" Or "Card's full!"^note referring to the SD card in his camera) when Chris is finally ready and about to take the photo, the dock collapses under the campers' combined weight, sending everyone but Chris crashing into the water.

Real Life

• Group portraits of a family, a military unit, a yeargroup in school, or any other group of individuals with something in common are Older Than Radio.

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