The Main Characters Do Everything

He analyzes crime scenes!
He caps bad guys!
He interrogates!
He writes parking tickets!
He does weddings!
He spays and neuters your pets!

"Ramirez, use the remote-controlled Predator missiles!"
"Ramirez! Use your laser designator to call in artillery on those vehicles!"
"Ramirez, get that briefcase... what's left of it."
"Ramirez, get on that minigun!"
"Ramirez, get on that sniper rifle!"
"Ramirez, use some of this ordnance to take out the enemy vehicles!"

— Sergeant Foley to Private Ramirez, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

In Real Life, the various members of an organization have well-defined jobs, which include a specific set of responsibilities and a limited amount of authority. Each member is restricted to performing only a specific set of activities. This system, called "departmentalization", allows the organization to train each member in one set of tasks, allows each member to focus on those tasks, and prevents people from stepping on each other's toes while doing their jobs. Departmentalization is a key aspect of many organizations (particularly large ones), including police, military, medical, governmental, educational and even commercial organizations.

In fiction, however, organizations are rarely depicted in this fashion, particularly when main characters are members of said organization. Instead of having a restricted set of responsibilities and authority, The Main Characters Do Everything. They will often be seen doing whatever tasks are important to the story or interesting to watch, regardless of whether they would logically have the clearance, ability, or even the need to do those things themselves. Furthermore, any figures of authority in the organization will rarely show an interest in maintaining any departmentalized structure, often ordering our main characters to act outside conventional boundaries. In many cases, we'll see a lot of people milling about in the background doing nothing, because the Main Characters are already doing their job.

Whether the main characters have the skills necessary for the task is irrelevant. The point is that an organization described or even depicted as being departmentalized is showing no concern to maintain its own departments or hierarchy — allowing some of its members to do virtually anything they deem necessary — or even orders them to do so.

On some shows, the situation will be even more skewed: A main character is actually a figure of authority, but is frequently seen performing the jobs of his underlings — particularly putting himself into dangerous situations. Real-world departmentalized organizations often go to extreme lengths to keep the higher-ups out of danger, letting expendables do the dirty work. In fact, superiors are often explicitly discouraged from taking a "hands-on" approach entirely (even when they are more qualified for a task than their underlings), whereas in fiction this notion seems to be almost non-existent.

This trope usually happens because writers are faced with a tough dilemma: If our main characters were realistically limited to the scope of their own jobs, things would probably get boring. How interesting would it be to watch The Captain pushing papers and managing his crew all day? How many interesting stories can revolve around watching the doctor diagnosing patients in his little office? ^note There are also Real Life reasons for a TV show to do this — you're already paying your main cast top-dollar per episode. They also want to be on screen — they did boring roles for years before landing this gig. The audience notices if these characters aren't around. Other shows would like to woo your actors away for their own casts. You have to put them on when you can to make sure you are getting your money's worth and your actors and fans are happy. The easiest way to do it is by using this trope. As for hiring lesser-known actors to do those roles, they need to be paid, too... and if they're on the show every week they'll want better pay and higher billing.

Of course, one solution would be to add tons of characters to follow around, each with his own little job. Some writers prefer this, and some even pull it off rather well — but the multitude of characters can still potentially confuse the audience (and it can also get expensive hiring more and more actors for bit roles). Another solution is to focus only on the most interesting jobs in the organization, and have everything else be done off-screen (as seen in the many Police Procedural aversions listed below) — but again requires very good writing skills and/or very interesting stories to fit this specific format.

Instead, most writers prefer increasing the scope of the Main Character's job far beyond realistic limits, or even impose no limits whatsoever. So now, the Captain goes out on dangerous away-missions, the general practitioner goes into surgery, and the forensic analyst does interrogations and arrests — whatever serves the drama. The break from realism is brushed under the carpet, in the hope that the resulting drama will be gripping enough to keep the viewers engaged.

It is important to note that this trope is a tool, often being considered one of the many Acceptable Breaks from Reality. It helps reduce the introduction of Flat Characters that carry out the menial tasks, and keeps the main characters in focus throughout the episode.

A show can be said to use this trope if it fits one or more of the following definitions:

• In a realistic world, one or more of the main characters would not be allowed to do what they're doing, given the stated or implied definitions of their jobs.
  Example: A police detective performs an official autopsy.
• The main characters are repeatedly seen performing a task that does not fit any of their stated job descriptions, when there is no reason that they couldn't (or shouldn't) acquire an additional team-member specifically to handle that task.
  Example: A SWAT team keeps getting called for bomb-threat missions, but no one ever thinks of hiring a bomb specialist.
• The main characters perform tasks that should've been the job of other characters who are also present and able to perform those jobs.
  Example: A SWAT team's sniper disarms a bomb, while the teammate known to be a bomb specialist watches him work.
• There are many secondary characters or Ghost Extras around who seem to have absolutely no job, since the main characters are doing everything on their own.
  Example: We see the bomb squad arrive at the scene, but the hero detective is still the one who goes to disarm the bomb.
• None of the figures of authority on the show seem to have any problems with the lack of departmentalization, or repeatedly order the main characters to act outside that departmentalized structure.
  Example: The police commissioner sees the bomb squad arriving, but still lets the hero detective disarm the bomb himself.
• One or more of the main characters is a figure of authority, but has no regards for departmentalization — often involving themselves in heavy micromanagement of every little detail.
  Example: The bomb squad is disarming a bomb, but the police commissioner is giving them instructions on how to do so over the radio.
• One or more of the main characters is a figure of authority, but constantly places him/herself into dangerous situations, despite there being plenty of "expendables" around who should be doing so in his/her stead.
  Example: The police commissioner dismantles a bomb while the entire police department watches (with fingers crossed).

Note that the trope can be (and sometimes is) justified simply by providing a logical reason why any of the above should occur. Several such examples are listed below. Unfortunately, many shows offer no such explanation.

Finally, note that this trope is rarely confined to a single main character. It's usually a group of characters who, between them, seem to carry out every possible task in the show. You'll never see the extras doing anything important, it's always one of the Main Characters who gets the task. Some shows make this even more complicated by having one main character doing the job of another main character, because that other main character is off doing some other job that isn't within their remit. In the worst case scenario, this cascades on and on until all of the main characters are doing something they aren't supposed to do.

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It's Up to You is a specialized form of this trope, where the player character in a video game Does Everything.

This trope is closely related to Ghost Extras, since the two tropes are almost always played together. Expect the main character(s) to be an Omnidisciplinary Scientist or Lawyer, Super Doc, or Do-Anything Soldier (it's usually an excuse to let him Do Everything). One Riot, One Ranger is an extreme application of the trope. Command Roster practically guarantees the trope. Also connected to Red Shirt; if you're in a series where The Main Characters Do Everything, and suddenly you see someone else participating in the main action, they might be there only for purposes of a sudden death. Can overlap with Critical Staffing Shortage if it's acknowledged that there should be more people doing things, but the main characters are all that's on hand.

Somewhat related to Composite Character, where after adaptation a single character has to carry out tasks that were originally carried out by two or more separate characters.

Compare with Einstein Sue and The Only One, where our main characters do everything because all other characters are either incompetent, or just never happen to be around when they're needed. Also compare Always on Duty and Economy Cast, where the main characters actually do stick to their specialties, but it seems that they're the only ones who do anything when there really should be others available.

Contrast Minimalist Cast, which is when the main characters do everything because there isn't anyone else. Contrast with The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything, where characters explicitly don't do anything that is related to their job description. Also contrast with Lower-Deck Episode, where a normally-TMCDE show suddenly focuses on the people in the background, and typically has to temporarily suspend TMCDE to make it work. See also Artistic License – Education, Artistic License – Law Enforcement, Artistic License – Military, and Artistic License – Politics.

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Example subpages:

• Live-Action TV

Other examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Case Closed, minor characters will only find evidence if it's there to throw them off track; all the important sleuthing is done by the Amateur Sleuth protagonist.
• Death Note:
  • At the beginning, it was averted. L, the Japanese police and the FBI are all investigating the Kira case, with the FBI acting independently from L, so except for Raye Penbar (who happened to be tailing the right suspect), the other agents investigated other people off-screen. Cool, but after Light kills the FBI agents, all other police forces involved give up on the case almost entirely, leaving the job only for the main characters. Given that Kira is a global threat, it would be reasonably expected that at some point most police forces in the world would start hunting him, but it never happens - aside from L and his successors Near and Mello, not even private investigators become interested in the case for some reason, and it's even stated during the timeskip that Kira only became more powerful.
  • It happens in the Yotsuba arc as well, we get to assume that only L and people who work with him are trying to catch the new Kira (Higuchi), since it's never mentioned that the Yotsuba group is being investigated by someone else, or that any investigation is taking place at all aside from what we see on-screen, despite his crimes being a lot less likely to get any support from the public In-Universe.
• Dragon Ball Z:
  • Son Goku will inevitably be the only one capable of defeating the Big Bad by the end of the story arc, primarily due to a bad case of Can't Catch Up for the rest of the cast. He takes notice of this problem as early as the Androids arc, in which Future Trunks comes from a timeline where his death to a heart disease lead to the rest of the Z Fighters all dying because they couldn't match the Androids; after narrowly surviving the disease, he immediately starts working on helping Gohan get strong enough to take over his role for when he does die, and the climax of the Cell arc revolves around Goku setting things up for Gohan to finish Cell.
  • In the Saiyan, Cell and Buu arcs, this trope is invoked due to the presence of the Gods and Kaios who, despite being the guardians of various realms and even the entire universe, rarely directly intervene and instead are outshone by the protagonists. In cases where they do, they're completely outmatched by the villains and leave it up to the main characters to sort things out.
  • In Dragon Ball Super, the Final Boss of the Future Trunks arc also averts this; Fused Zamasu is bisected by Future Trunks and annihilated by Future Zen'o-sama.
  • Happens on a larger scale in Super's Universal Survival arc; out of the first 36 eliminations, Universe 7 (that's us) gets 23, while the de facto Deuteragonist Universe 6 gets 10. Universe 9 gets one elimination, and gets bonus points for drawing first blood, while Universe 2 gets 2. Admittedly, Universe 7 getting the most knockouts is justified, as the entire tournament to determine which universe survives happened purely because of Goku, making the other nine very upset at him, and his allies by extension. Though none of the main characters win; Android 17 does.
• This is one of the oddities with the Gundam series being the progenitor of the Real Robot Genre - for all that it's supposed to have the Mobile Suits as just another set of armored vehicles to fight a war with, said war's outcome still tends to entirely hinge on the actions of one Super Prototype and its typically-untrained pilot.
• Lampshaded in Heavy Object- Qwenser and Hevia are supposed to be maintenance team members and comment on this fact frequently when they're repeatedly assigned to combat roles.
• Monster Musume: Kimihito and his Balanced Harem aren't even government workers, but they're still dragooned into doing all sorts of work for the Department of Demihuman Relations. This is because Ms. Smith is fairly lazy (in her defense, she's also heavily overworked and underpaid) and likes to push whatever work she can onto Kimihito. Heck, she's the one who made him host a monstergirl in the first place, as she just dumped Miia onto him instead of assigning her to a family who'd actually volunteered for the Interspecies Exchange Program. Kimihito brings up how inappropriate it is for him to be doing such things all the time, but Ms. Smith manages to guilt him into going along with everything anyway.
• Happens in Phoenix, particularly with the two speaking-part forensic scientists.
• An odd case with Pokémon: The Series is the characters of Nurse Joy and Officer Jenny. In part they subvert this trope, since they are technically many characters despite being essentially identical. However, other police and nurses (who we see on occasion actually do exist) pretty much never get to do anything of consequence. Good luck advancing when your entire industry is dominated by one family.
• Princess Principal: Supposedly there are other groups of spies on the same team as the heroes, but we never see any of them. An especially strange case is episode 7, where they need to find a rogue soldier, but can't infiltrate the barracks because everyone there is male—any member of their all-girl squad would be too conspicuous. No one suggests sending in a male spy, instead of one of the main characters. Then again, maybe there aren't any.
• Averted in Psycho-Pass where the ones who are gathering the evidence in the crime scenes are droids while the Inspectors and Enforcers do the detective work. However this is played straight with Shion Karanamori, who seemed the only person doing the lab analysis, being the Mission Control to the PSB units and hacking. Though Jyoji Saiga did joined the bureau as an analyst in Season 2, he's only hired for a short time by Akane and the only job that he did is interrogate those involved in the Kamui case.
• In Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Kyubey is a pretty extreme example. He claims to be part of a vast civilization of Sufficiently Advanced Aliens, but even when the plot escalates to the point of destroying Earth and rewriting the laws of reality, we never see a single other member of his species. This is somewhat averted in The Movie, where thousands of his fellow space-ferrets make an appearance; though they still don't actually do anything, they just observe the antics of the main characters from afar until they get obliterated all at once by a Rain of Arrows.
  • It's actually implied that Kyubey's race is a Hive Mind, which - if true - would mean that every Incubator we see is Kyubey acting through one of its countless identical bodies.
• Applies to any time the cast of Sailor Moon take on that episode's monster. Sure, the other Sailor Senshi usually can attack the monster, but only Sailor Moon can directly finish it off.
• Zig-zagged in Yu-Gi-Oh!. The outcome of anyone but Yami Yugi dueling the main antagonist is usually a Foregone Conclusion, as is Yugi dueling almost anyone, though Yami Yugi sometimes needs a final push from his friends to deliver the final blow. Played straight against Yami Marik, as Mai, Yami Bakura, and Jonouchi failed to defeat him and Yami Yugi eventually defeated him without The Power of Friendship. Many of the other options employed to defeat Zorc in the final battle were also hopeless by design as the arc was leading up to Yami Yugi's true name being the weapon needed to defeat him.
• This trope is examined and deconstructed throughout Yu-Gi-Oh!: Capsule Monsters. As the hero, Yami Yugi is generally the most effective battler, but refuses to let his friends help out during a tough fight over fear that they'd be hurt. When Joey and Tristan point out that they don't want to see him hurt, he realizes he can't do everything by himself. Yami goes on to (mostly) save the day himself thanks to his Duel Armor, but the Big Bad tells him to sacrifice his friends to catch up to his power level, saying that he doesn't need them. Yugi's friends actually agree with this, though Yugi himself does not, and in the end it's his friends' power that ultimately saves the day, creating the Armor of of Unity and enabling him to win the fight.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX is very blatant about this in the first season when the Key Guardians are dueling the Seven Stars Assassins. Despite having the same number of members, Judai defeats five of them and defeats the Big Bad in the end.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS is another offender as in every season. Yusaku is always the one facing the Big Bad in the end while the other characters lose to the villains then turned to data or just watching in the real world unable to do anything. And if they were able to do anything, the villains quickly render their efforts All for Nothing or is actually part of the grand scheme of things.

Comic Books

• Batman: Sort of kind of justified with the Gotham Police Department, which any casual reader would think consisted of about five people (one commissioner, a few detectives and the odd nervous rookie) doing all the jobs of a major metropolitan police force. Of course, the GPD is usually depicted as massively corrupt and/or incompetent, so the members of the Major Crimes Unit (the commissioner's pet project), being the few non-corrupt officers, are usually the ones who have to deal with Batman and the supervillains.
• DMZ has the main character Matty Roth, a photojournalist, in the center of every single event concerning the DMZ. He eventually helps elect the new leader of the DMZ and becomes his right-hand man. Then he gets sent to acquire a nuke for the new government. Then he single-handedly brokers an end to the war and negotiates a peace deal with all of the factions of the DMZ.
• The Incredible Hulk: Really, Bruce Banner's troubles with his Hulk condition could have been avoided from the beginning if he simply sent guards at the base to get Rick Jones out of the Gamma Bomb blast zone in the first place instead of going himself. That way, Banner could have kept an eye on the detonation process and held it until the guards and trespasser was clear.
• In the Nick Fury: Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D. stories, it is often forgotten that SHIELD is an organization of thousands of agents and operatives. Yet it is always Colonel Nick Fury, Dum Dum Dugan, Gabe Jones, Val, and a handful of other high ranking S.H.I.E.L.D agents who do most or all of the infiltrating, shooting, fighting, spying, and interacting with all of the superheroes. Even despite the fact that these characters should be too aged for active field frontline duties. Also, these characters always operate under their real names, oddly enough.
• In Scott Pilgrim, a disproportionate number of events of worldwide importance seem to involve the core cast of characters in some way. For example, the reason why there are two large holes in the moon is because Todd Ingram punched them into it with his bare fists to impress Ramona and Envy (respectively for each hole).
• Star Trek (IDW):
  • Lampshaded in an early issue (just like the video game). In the first part of "Return of the Archons", Kirk elects to go down to a planet himself after Sulu goes missing and Spock discovers a power source underground. When Spock tells him not to, Kirk mockingly says he should get a security team to cover it instead, before going off himself and beaming both of them down.
  • Also averted in one issue. Spock attempts to join the away team when they go to investigate a squad of Gorn soldiers on an isolated planet and is rebuffed. Kirk tells him that due to his previous encounter with the Gorn (which resulted in him being infected with a virus), his attempted sacrifice in a volcano, a fistfight with Khan over San Francisco and his recent recovery from Pon Farr, he's confining Spock to the ship for the foreseeable future.
• Superman:
  • In the storyline The Untold Story of Argo City, when Supergirl informs the Science Council of Kandor — a surviving Kryptonian city — that her parents might be still alive, the council of elders wish the sixteen-year-old girl good luck in her endeavor to rescue one of their top scientists and his wife from a dimensional prison instead of using their considerable resources and manpower to take care of the matter personally.
  • Deconstructed in "Metropolis Mailbag" from Superman (Vol. 2) #64, in which Superman goes through his fan mail, most of which are requests to save the day that are beyond his capabilities. One such letter is from a boy who wants Superman to perform brain surgery to save his dying father, forcing Superman to have a talk with the naïve kid in-person about what he can and cannot do.
• Subverted for laughs in Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: One issue has the crew under attack from a group of parasites, and in the time it takes for the regulars to escape after learning of their existence, three nobodies already informed the captain of the situation, allowing him to solve it in 5 minutes.
• Ultimate Galactus Trilogy: Discussed, during Ultimate Nightmare. The small Ultimates team needs a science guy, but Fury cites many reasons for not calling Tony Stark this time. Fortunately, he has other science guys on the payroll, such as Sam Wilson.
• Wonder Woman (1942): Steve Trevor and Diana Prince are assigned undercover assignments, investigate new research, and act as pilots, and Steve is sent to fight super-villains, organized crime and Nazis with Wonder Woman joining in despite the fact that Di is a secretary and they're both members of the United States Army which has significantly more people than the two of them and Gen. Darnell. Other members of the army only show up to be rescued by them.

Fan Works

• Justified in Peace Forged in Fire. Morgan and D'trel, both Romulan Republican Force officers, take over critical negotiations from the trained Republic diplomats because the Romulan Star Empire's Praetor Velal, previously career military, doesn't respect the politicos.
• Broken Legends picks this apart: Kiera comes to resent how everyone in Hoenn seems to keep shunting all the reponsibility of saving the world onto her shoulders. After the traumatic events at the Seafloor Cavern, Steven triggers her Rage Breaking Point and gets himself used as a human battering ram for his troubles. And all of this comes before she discovers that No Good Deed Goes Unpunished in Hoenn.
• The four openly reject this trope in The Keys Stand Alone. During the book they're expected to be spies, healers, rescuers, detectives, delivery boys, warriors... none of which they're prepared to do. George and John in particular make a point of asking "Why do we have to do this when there are guards around, or other outworlders around, who could do it?"
• Soul Clef XI: Dr. Emily Grey is the one giving Locus his physical examination on behalf of the Federal Army. This would be justified since she's insanely overqualified for most jobs. However, the very angry medical examiner who was supposed to be giving Locus the exam tells her to leave and stop taking everyone's jobs. The examiner does admit that she did everything excellently so he didn't need to do it again, but he's still not happy about it.
  Dr. Grey: I will not be silenced! I have seven PhDs and I have a right to exercise them!
• Averted in Cultural Artifacts in regards to learning about the Big Guy. While the Man Six occasionally help, it's made clear that most of the heavy lifting in the situation is done by professional soldiers and diplomats. The Mane Six's biggest contribution is Applejack being ordered to let the Big Guy work on her farm for a day to see what he's physically capable of. Though, their lack of involvement is justified in that two of the six (Twilight and Pinkie) made horrible first impressions.
• Averted in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fic "Oswiecim", when the Defiant ends up travelling back to the Second World War after being hijacked by a Changeling. While the senior staff try to take point in the effort to find the changeling, OC Ensign Thomas has to brief them on the nature of the conflict being waged down on Earth at this point as none of them know enough about it themselves. Likewise, when selecting an away team to infiltrate a Nazi base, OC Lieutenant Novak is chosen as he is naturally fluent in German (the universal translators wouldn't allow them to read German) and of the available senior staff only O'Brien and Dax (once disguised) would pass for "superior racial stock" by Nazi standards (Kira is also considered, but Bashir was abducted by the changeling upon arrival so they don't have a doctor to properly disguise her nose).
• Averted in Luna Aeternal: even though Princess Luna did help contain the Antimatter Bomb explosion, without the help of the humans it would have been for nothing, she would have died on the moon from her injuries because no one would have found her in time and General Ravensaw would have been elected as First Citizen and continued the war because no one found the evidence that he helped steal the bomb from the arsenal. In fact Twilight Sparkle actually made the situation worse by unwittingly letting a corrupt Royal Guard carry what turned out to be a teleportation spell beacon through a magic detector allowing the terrorists aboard the Moonbase.
• Deconstructed with Zuko and the Gaang in the Alternate Universe Fic Towards the Sun:
  • With Zuko: the formerly imprisoned Zuko is made Fire Lord after Ozai is captured and Azula goes crazy. Despite Zuko's royal training, he was never taught how to delegate and in the middle of the unenviable situation of trying to change a century-long wartime economy to a peace economy, trying to get peace treaties with other nations that hate them and fix his father's mismanagement. Which leads to Zuko working himself to the ground and putting his health on a downward spiral.
  • With the Gaang: With most of the Earth Kingdom generals refusing to leave the country, the Earth King missing and the Water Tribe leadership either too far or captured, the Gaang have to represent their respective nations in the peace conference Fire Lord Zuko is holding. They have no experience in politics and their hatred toward Zuko hinder any attempts to make any concessions on either side. In the end they outright fail to get any concessions and accidentally undermine their own desires for peace when they trigger a coup which results in civil war.
• Played for Laughs in the Dragon Ball Z Abridged version of The World's Strongest. When Goku is caught in ice, Gohan and Krillin drop in and try to save the day, only to get taken out easily. Goku's response? To sigh deeply and roll his eyes before letting out a bored "Kaioken" to break free.

Films

• Antebellum: Despite being on a plantation full of other slaves who are also modern day trafficking victims rather than having generations-in-bondage slave mentalities, none of them did much to change anything before Veronica. However, we do see at the beginning that some attempted to escape, but were brutally punished (with the woman murdered).
• A common criticism of Armageddon (1998) points out that it makes no sense to train a bunch of out-of-shape professional oil-rig operators to become astronauts when you can instead train the existing professional astronauts to drill. In the DVD Commentary, Ben Affleck notes that he pointed this out to Michael Bay during filming, to which Bay replied "shut the fuck up."
• Army of Darkness: Played for ridiculousness. College student from The '90s Ash Williams leads all aspects of the castle's defense from an undead siege, right down to training the villagers to fight with polearms.
• Demolition Man: Lieutenant Lenina Huxley - a patrol officer - operates the computer and cameras during Simon Phoenix's initial rampage through San Angeles, despite there being multiple other cops present whose job seems to be to do exactly that. On the other hand, she's pretty much the only cop in the room (or the city) who isn't shocked into complete impotence by Simon's multiple Murder-Death-Kills.
• Although mostly played straight in Galaxy Quest, at one point it's averted and lampshaded, when it's pointed out that the only thing "Lt. Tawny Madison" does is repeat everything the computer says.
  Look, I have one job on this lousy ship. It's stupid, but I'm going to do it. Okay?
• In The Giant Behemoth, American scientist Steve Karnes goes inside the British mini-sub on the mission to kill the Paleosaurus, operating the vessel's firing controls, as opposed to a Royal Navy officer.
• Impressively accomplished in a film with only two characters: Gravity features Dr. Ryan Stone, a medical engineer and "mission specialist" astronaut who is upgrading the Hubble telescope with a special piece of technology that she helped to invent. When things start going haywire, it becomes clear that Stone doesn't have the training against panic that most astronauts must go through, leading one to wonder why, perhaps, NASA didn't choose to train another astronaut in how to install the tech, rather than train an engineer to go into space.
  • Mission Commanders rarely leave their ship, but Kowalski is out on a spacewalk when the film opens. Justified, as this is his last mission and he's indulging himself.
• By the end of High School High, only the six unique students in Mr. Clark's class graduates from high school.
• In The Hunt for Red October, for some reason the Dallas' sonar operator Jonesy goes with the Captain and Ryan to the Russian submarine. A few scenes later, we see him operating the sonar station of that submarine, with the Russian sonar operator standing over his shoulder^note Justified in the book: Jones is explicitly called the best sonarman in the Navy, and is brought to the Red October to jury-rig up a Gertrude underwater telephone and study the Russian sonar system for an initial report to the Admirals. When shit hits the fan, Jones is operating the sonar system with the Russian sonar officer, who is primarily working the more complicated jamming and countermeasure system, leaving Jones to run the passive sonar instead.
• Island of Terror: Brian Stanley and David West basically take over the island from the actual guy in charge, and even appoint the inexperienced and frankly unreliable Toni Merrill (who is only there because she let them use her father's helicopter) as leader when they're not around, instead of an actual Irishman (or Irishwoman).
• In Ivan's Childhood, one of Capt. Gholin's duties is spymaster to Ivan, the titular teenage boy who uses his youth as a cover while spying behind German lines. Oddly, Capt. Gholin takes it upon himself to accompany Ivan on a very dangerous crossing of the river into German territory, rather than delegating the responsibility.
• Lord of the Rings: The movies, specifically, have Gandalf light the beacons by proxy, while the beacons are already lit in the books.
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail has King Arthur personally recruiting a small group of knights, then diving head-first into every kind of danger, without gathering the rest of his army until the very end.
• In Prometheus, the mission's two archaeologists are the same ones who discovered the initial clues pointing to their destination; both exhibit inexperience with space travel.
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan continues the original series' tradition: The starship Reliant arrives at Ceti Alpha 5, now an inhospitable and deadly planet, to check it for life forms. Who beams down to perform reconnaissance in full hazard gear? Why, the captain and first officer, of course!
  • Later, when beaming down to the incommunicado Regula I space station to try and find the missing Dr. Carol Marcus, the captain and chief medical officer decide that they are the best candidates to go before Saavik invents a regulation as an excuse to join them. Partly justified in that most of the ship is staffed by cadets at the time and Carol Marcus was specifically asking Kirk why he signed the order to transfer the Genesis Project to the military, so Kirk might be the only Starfleet personnel she would even listen to.
• Star Trek: Generations starts with the Enterprise B facing an emergency during a maiden voyage where Kirk, Scotty, and Chekov are guests of honor. Kirk modifies the ship's deflector, Scotty beams up the refugees, and Chekov is the temporary doctor. Part of this was because the Enterprise only has a skeleton crew on board - it was only intended to be a short trip for propaganda purposes before it was returned to base, more thoroughly equipped, and properly crewed. Also, the trio probably had more direct experience with equipment that wasn't up to spec; some of it wasn't schedule to arrive "until Tuesday".
• In Star Trek, the main cast does nearly everything because everyone else either doesn't show up, dies, or is incompetent. Bones is made Chief Medical Officer when his superior dies in Nero's first attack on the Enterprise. "Helmsman McKenna" never shows up, thus Sulu becomes the pilot. A linguistics officer proves incapable of distinguishing Romulan and Vulcan, thus xenolinguistics expert Uhura quickly earns his job. Then, the transporter room staff prove similarly incapable of locking on to Kirk and Sulu when they're falling without a chute, and Chekhov quickly runs to the transporter room, shoves them out of the way and does their job for them. Kirk and Sulu are in that situation because they and the Chief Engineer were all chosen for a combat mission instead of Enterprise security, even though they're all bridge crew and Sulu is already the backup pilot. When Chief Engineer Olsen proves to be a Red Shirt, Scotty, who came aboard mid-voyage, ends up taking his place. Finally, Kirk winds up becoming Acting Captain despite having never been meant to be on board in the first place, due to Pike being captured and Spock becoming emotionally compromised.
• In Star Trek Into Darkness, Scotty argues with Kirk and resigns. Instead of choosing someone from the engineering department to become the new chief engineer, Kirk chooses Chekov.
  • Likewise, at the beginning of the film, a mission to stop a volcano exploding apparently requires the captain, the second officer and science officer, the communications officer, and the ship's chief medical officer. And the communications office is only there because aforementioned science officer is her boyfriend. What exactly the chief medical officer is meant to bring to the mission is never stated.
  • And again, on a mission to find and capture a dangerous fugitive, the captain brings his science officer, his communications officer, and two redshirts who disappear without comment.
• Star Wars plays with this over the course of the franchise, though is mostly able to avert this thanks to numerous characters with small but important roles. For the Imperials, you never see any command officer fighting in combat, except for Vader, who is outside the normal line of authority and more often a Frontline General, and General Veers during the Battle of Hoth (which helped point out the dangers of a frontline general when, in both old and new continuities, he's nearly killed when a damaged snowspeeder kamikazes into his AT-AT's cockpit). With the Rebels, slightly more is done by high-level people, though again only in situations where it would be likely and many of those earned those ranks in earlier battles (Han and Lando promoted to General). For the most part, on both sides, you see admirals, generals, moffs, and even the Emperor only giving orders.
  • That said, Return of the Jedi plays the trope largely straight. First, the main cast rescues Han themselves without any outside aid from the Rebellion or otherwise. Then, once Han is unfrozen and the group reunites with the Rebels, Han, despite having previously stated his intent to leave the Rebellion on Hoth and having not been involved with any prior planning into the Endor mission, is assigned command of the strike team to destroy the Death Star's shield generator, and chooses most of the main characters for his command crew. Once on Endor, the main characters are quickly split up from the strike team, and do the heavy lifting in stopping scout troopers and recruiting the Ewoks. After reaching the generator, the strike team is quickly captured by the Imperials and are out of focus during the final battle, in favor of the main cast and the Ewoks. Meanwhile, Lando Calrissian, despite having only been part of the Rebellion for less than a year after the downfall of Cloud City, is one of the primary leaders of the assault on the Death Star, is the one to realize they've been led into a trap and saves the fleet, and leads the assault on the station's main reactor.
  • The sequel trilogy started leaning more and more into having the main characters being in absolute command of their faction. In The Last Jedi Kylo wrangles control of the First Order after killing Snoke while Poe and Finn become second only to Leia after much of the Resistance leadership is killed. In The Rise of Skywalker Kylo, Poe and Finn spend more time racing around the galaxy by themselves or in a small team than actually leading the people under them.
• In Them!, New Mexico State Trooper Ben Peterson hangs around long after it's ceased to make sense for a New Mexico State Trooper to do so, assisting the FBI and the Army in battling the giant ants, even leading squads of soldiers! He even lampshades this somewhat, commenting, "This is the first time I've ever given orders to a general!" when using a bazooka with a general as his firing partner.
  • This could be justified in terms of security, since the government, at that point, would want to keep news about the giant mutant ants confined to as few people as possible. So, since Peterson was already familiar with the situation, it would make sense to keep him around to assist in the operation.
• In Top Gun: Maverick, Maverick's friend, Warrant Officer Hondo, goes with him literally wherever he goes. At the start of the movie, he seems to be some sort of mission control chief during the Dark Star test. The project gets canceled and Maverick is sent to North Island for a secret mission, where we see Hondo handling various aspects of the training and mission preparation. Finally, when the team ships out to the aircraft carrier for their mission, Hondo is seen wearing deck maintenance crew gear and even climbing up to Maverick's plane for a last-minute chat. Maverick is a Captain, and might have a Warrant Officer serving as his aide, but more as a personal assistant rather than an integral part of the action.
  • Of course, the entire movie rests on the fact that every rule the Navy's ever had will be bent to accomodate Maverick, because he's the best of the best. Even the laws of physics sit this one out!

Literature

• Arrivals from the Dark: In Retaliation, the main character, Captain Paul Richard Corcoran, is the commanding officer of a Space Navy frigate. He spends about half the novel actually commanding the ship, and the other half boarding a suspicious alien ship or making a secret landing onto a hostile alien planet. The novel tries to justify this by his unique nature: he's a Half-Human Hybrid with Psychic Powers, who is uniquely qualified to sense and contact alien races. Additionally, while infiltrating the alien planet, he pilots one of their small ships, something only he can do due to his alien parentage. He's also a trained Space Marine, having started out as one (he also used to be a Space Fighter pilot, although, at least, the novel doesn't show him doing that outside of a Flashback). Apparently, it's quite common in this 'verse to start out as a Space Marine, only to end up eventually commanding a ship and then an entire fleet. In the sequel, Fighters of Danwait, his descendant Sergey Valdez, is a retired Space Navy commander, whose last posting in the fleet was that of a heavy cruiser's second pilot (a fairly prestigious posting, since this 'verse's heavy cruisers are what battleships are in American sci-fi). Valdez now serves as a mercenary, commanding a three-man patrol ship for a Higher-Tech Species of Technical Pacifists. He is both The Captain and the pilot of the ship, while the other two crewmembers are the gunners (which is what their postings used to be in the Space Navy before the peacetime cutbacks). And yet, when it's time to board enemy ships, all three grab weapons and rush in like true Space Marines.
• Discussed in A Brother's Price, where the princesses are Royals Who Actually Do Something, and are quite keen on doing the dangerous adventuring tasks themselves. They usually find a compromise that consists of their bodyguard accompanying one or two of them, while the other ones (there are five who are of age) stay at the palace and do the less interesting office work. As the Whistler family is at one point recruited into helping the princesses, this trope is still somewhat in power - while we do not know much about most of them, they are the main protagonist's family.
• The Clone: For some reason, junior pathologist Mark Kenniston sits in on important meetings about how to deal with the titular amorphous organism, and later directs fire and rescue efforts and even personally leads a squad of scuba divers to combat the thing inside the flooded subway. All things you wouldn't think a pathologist would do. Likewise, supporting characters nurse Edie Hempstead and dishwasher Harry Schwartz hang around and do loads of stuff in place of other characters.
• Discworld:
  • Novels featuring the Ankh-Morpork Times, to an extent. William de Word still acts like an Intrepid Reporter in Monstrous Regiment, even though he's supposed to be the managing editor. In Unseen Academicals, he insists on reporting on the football match, although he assigned a sports reporter at the end of The Truth. If it's not him, it's his wife, Sacharissa, as seen in the Moist von Lipwig books. Justified since William invented newspapers on the Disc, and therefore his job works however he says it does.
  • Sam Vimes also finds himself doing a lot more work on the streets than his position as Commander of the Watch in the biggest city on the Disc should allow. However, this is often lampshaded and justified - Sam thoroughly dislikes the official side of his job and always looks for excuses to get out and do some real policing. And as he's only answerable to the Patrician (and his own wife), he can get away with it.
• In Therin Knite's Echoes (2014), Adem and the rest of Night Team One are the "premier" team at EDPA, meaning they get called in to work any cases deemed high priority by the organization. Since the books revolve around a series of escalating "high priority" cases, Night Team One ends up doing everything, all the time, from things far beyond their collective skill sets to the marginally important tasks that would usually be relegated to lower-ranked agents.
• This trope is somewhat built into the very premise of the Ender's Game series, where a good number of the major characters are a bunch of super-prodigies who, in the first novel, were drafted as children (or at least strongly considered) by the military to be trained into tactical geniuses. The three Wiggin siblings, between them, go on to command an international space fleet, unite humanity under one government, found a major religion, destroy an alien race, save 3 alien races, become the most hated person in history, become the most loved person in history, make faster-than-light travel possible, and manage to do much this without their true identities being revealed to more than half a dozen people.
• Exaggerated in Door of Death, the 15th book in the Fear Street spinoff Fear Street Sagas. Aside from the town blacksmith, the only people being targeted as "cheaters" on Jake Fear's list of victims just happen to be all of the protagonist Amy Burke's friends. Apparently everyone else in Shadyside are squeaky clean aside from a handful of teenagers who all know each other and one adult male.
• Horatio Hornblower justified this.
  • Most of the time when Hornblower is doing something, he's of a rank lower than captain. Once he becomes a captain and higher, he's less likely to get involved himself, unless chance forces his hand.
  • On one occasion, he's forced to go on a mission because a borrowed Lieutenant on it would out-seniority Hornblowers preferred choice, his own Lt. Bush. Bush himself is decidedly unhappy about his beloved boss risking his life.
  • Hornblower hates relying on other's assessments or abilities, and his fear of being a coward also pushes him to do things himself whenever he can. Hence things like getting soaked to the skin personally clambering around a harbor boom in Commodore, instead of ordering his young lieutenants do the recon and report back.
  • And at least once, after reaching higher than Captain, he admits to himself that he simply wants to and there's no one there to stop him.
• The main characters of LARP: The Battle for Verona, a group of LARPers, instruct the US Army on how to repel Mongolian invaders using Medieval technology. The fact that these are young people who get together on weekends to play games instructing dedicated military personnel breaks the suspension of disbelief quite quickly.
• The villains in the Left Behind series seem to have an HR problem: Nicolae Carpathia rules the world with only a former flight attendant, a botanist, a disgraced ex-seminarian, and a newspaper editor to help him. But then again, Carpathia is literally Satan, Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies and the Prince of darkness, it's not as if he needed the human underlings. It doesn't help that his personal pilot and publicist are the leaders of the other side.
• Justified in The Lost Fleet; having managed to get home from a disastrous raid on the enemy rear with a high percentage of his fleet intact, recently recovered Human Popsicle and very reluctant legendary war hero John Geary is immediately sent off on another mission as far from his home nation -much to his own considerable displeasure- as possible because he scares the living daylights out of his political leadership; relations between the military and the government have become exceedingly strained thanks to a century of brutal and bloody warfare, and there was already a serious threat of a coup before a man who is Famed In-Story as some hybrid of Admiral Nelson and Captain America came back from the dead. It also doesn't hurt that he's just about the only really competent fleet commander they have left at this point, because casualties have been so appalling that training and experience are in short supply.
• Perry Rhodan suffers from this to varying degrees over time. The title character in particular kind of naturally has to appear and take center stage at least every so often, so even in his various capacities as head of state or other VIP over time he gets involved in a lot of things that his position would indicate he should normally only hear reports of while staying safely on Earth himself.
• Lampshaded in Redshirts, where a newly-arrived ensign wonders why a bridge officer whose position is that of an astro-navigator would be sent on an away mission to collect bio-samples of a plague. In fact, it's stated that he always seems to have something bad happen to him only to get better shortly after, while some poor ensign gets eaten/vaporized/spaced/suffocated/etc.
• Despite A Song of Ice and Fire having tons of characters, there is a definite shortage of required administration. Eddard Stark is the Lord Paramount of the North, a region the size of about half of South America, yet his administration seems to be just six people: himself, his wife Catelyn, Maester Luwin, Captain of the Guards Jory Cassel, Master-Of-Arms Rodrick Cassel, and Steward Vayon Poole. For a much worse example, Varys runs a spy network of hundreds or thousands of individuals scattered all around the world and they all report directly to him. That's like having the CIA composed of the Director and a few thousand Field Agents. It's amazing he has time to get involved in all of these conspiracies personally.
• Stray Cat Strut: Used in a way reminiscent of video games; appropriate, as it's a LitRPG. Cat quickly finds that while she technically outranks everyone as a samurai, random no-name mall cops are still willing to give her Fetch Quests to rescue civilians or plug in the defense grid or what have you. When she finally encounters higher-tier samurai, they are either too busy to help her, or just give her some mobility support so that she can get the majority of the kills and rank up faster. In later books, there's a massive worldwide Incursion, and Cat wonders why the higher-tier samurai aren't handling everything. Again, they admit they could each defend an entire city on their own... but since they're so busy elsewhere, it's better to let Cat and her friends handle it so that they'll rank up, and eventually be able to do that sort of thing themselves.
• Sword of Truth: If Richard didn't do it, and Kahlan didn't do it, then the action in question is by definition evil, because no one else on the side of good has any agency whatsoever. Becomes slightly ridiculous when an ancient wizard ancestor of Richard who was so powerful and dangerous that there was an entire civilization founded on keeping him and his flawless future-vision locked up, and a second civilization based on exploiting the technology invented to keep him that way escapes dramatically from confinement to... kind of faff around in the background aimlessly for a couple books, and maybe make a pass at an old woman or two. Little help with the oncoming super-evil empire of doom would have been nice, granddad.

Podcasts

• Lampshaded in The Adventure Zone: Balance. There are seven ancient artifacts that must be collected and destroyed for the safety of the world. Secret magical society with limitless resources and a moon base: zero. Three horny boys: six. The Director of the Bureau of Balance notes this in-universe after the Petals to the Metal arc and decides to reassign all other reclaimers and put the Bureau's full resources behind supporting the party.
  • Later justified: according to the Director, because they made them, the main party are the only people who can resist the thrall of the Grand Relics. Anyone else gets tempted to use them and inevitably corrupted by their power if they do.

Puppet Shows

• The title craft in Stingray (1964) is supposedly the fastest, deadliest, most advanced submarine in the world, crewed by the two most elite aquanauts. Despite the many hostile underwater races and other threats from the world's oceans, Stingray is nevertheless always available to go on treasure hunts, to investigate wild rumours and to patrol oyster beds.
• Thunderbirds: Officially, International Rescue has agents all over the world, and Lady Penelope is strictly the London Agent. Yet, she's the only agent shown to have a direct video connection to IR headquarters, and whenever IR needs something investigated, no matter where in the world, she and her butler Parker are always the ones they call upon.

Radio

• The Men from the Ministry, Yes, Minister's spiritual predecessor (though it featured only civil servants), was set at the even less realistic General Assistance Department, with the remit that they were there to 'just help out' any other department which was overloaded (in fact it had only 3 civil servants working there, two of whom would get involved with absurdly small detail of the tasks in hand.)

Roleplay

• Destroy the Godmodder: Literally everything that happens happens because of entities and players mentioned in the main plot. Despite there being billions of other beings on the field, everything has to be done by the players.

Tabletop Games

• GURPS After the End offers a way to justify it in Zombie Apocalypse settings: every Player Character has to be The Immune to the zombie plague, thus giving them a reason to be the ones doing the adventuring.
• Rogue Trader takes this trope and runs with it- the smallest ship available has a crew of 7500, while average crew size is around 30-45 thousand. Whether it's negotiating trade deals, exploring alien ruins, commanding landing parties or picking up the mail, generally the only people who typically get their hands dirty and get stuff done? The Player Characters...
• Space 1889 mostly justified. Most adventures take place far away from human civilization and the player characters find themselves needing to do a bit of everything. Also even in the most advanced, urban, human civilizations of 1889 people are a lot less specialized and trained in a speciality than they are today. It is not too difficult for an amateur detective to have useful knowledge a professional police investigator does not, not to mention a regular beat cop. Furthermore social status is greatly respected and can allow you to push professionals around. If Lord X wants to demonstrate to a professional teacher how teaching should be done, the teacher is very likely to put up with it and keep his groaning silent.
• This is a common problem in most roleplaying games, especially D&D. Why is the high level wizard sending the low level party to retrieve an item for them, when they could teleport there, nuke everything, and be back home in about 5 minutes? Sometimes there are justifications, but usually it just needs to be ignored.

Video Games

• 7 Days a Skeptic and 6 Days a Sacrifice have been accused of this. In the former, the ship's counselor is forced to do things like machinery maintenance and going EVA to investigate the comm array, while the engineer who's supposed to do these things loiter in the mess hall. In the latter, the protagonist has fallen down an elevator shaft, and has so many fractures and concussions that a wrong movement could kill him. Yet he's forced to hobble around the area carrying out fetch quests and interrogating prisoners while his uninjured allies hide in their rooms. The game maker has admitted to this, but saw no other option.
• The Ace Combat games serve as sort of an aerial counterpart to Call of Duty: The player (and, in some games, his wingmen) literally do the work of several squadrons, from combat air patrols to close support missions to counter-naval interdiction, and have access to a wide variety of planes to do so, regardless of whether it makes sense for their country to use them (e.g. allied NPCs only ever using American jets, while the player gets MiGs and Mirages). Unlike a lot of games, however, the games do acknowledge what kind of reputation someone in the player character's position would receive, and by the halfway point of any given story after Ace Combat 3 the player character is The Dreaded among the enemy; the story for Ace Combat 5's arcade mode in particular states that the higher-ups deliberately sent Mobius 1 and his AWACS support in to deal with the situation alone because they have been repeatedly shown during the last war to be more effective than an entire squadron.
  • Ace Combat at least provides some justification for this, in that air power is always the most important aspect of the wars that take place in the series - the player characters just happen to be the single most skilled pilots of those wars. AC04 in particular has its plot kicked off simply because the bad guys stole a weapon system that could destroy any plane over most of the continent the game takes place in, thus allowing them to steamroll the good guys until the player steps in.
• The Age of Decadence: Averted. While the player may only pick one of the multiple backgrounds, whatever storyline you go down, it's clear that the others are still happening in your absence. Frequently you only gain glimpses of the larger picture that you're working in, the world being mostly indifferent to your existence.
• The Player Character in Alice in the Mirrors of Albion is a police detective whose day-to-day tasks also includes helping the local citizens with their personal, work and relationship problems, such as finding their missing trinkets, preparing food, or selecting suitable gifts for family members/friends/love interests, and so on. The other members of the police department seem to solely exist to ask favours from the Player.
• Happens to a near ridiculous degree in Alundra, in which the title character of ambiguous age journeys to an abandoned manor for the first real puzzle level in order to retrieve a book. He is attacked by the White Monkeys among other things. He later goes into a potentially collapsing mine alone, while another character that is said to be a hunter does nothing. It's also pretty noticeable that Alundra is implied to be much younger than the adults who do very little. This is somewhat lampshaded when the other villagers acknowledge how helpless they are.
• It's justified in Assassin's Creed: player character Altaïr breaks every tenet of the Assassin's Creed at the beginning of the game and is demoted from Master to Novice as punishment. Throughout the game, Altaïr has to investigate the patterns and behavior of every target (which he previously had other, lower-ranked Assassins do for him), devise his own way to get close to them, and then kill them all by himself. The Bureau leaders recommend places to start his investigation and Assassin Informers will provide useful intel but in the latter case he has to do them a favor first.
• Played straight in Battlefield 3 when Sgt. Miller (tank crewmember^note evidently the commander, given which hatch he sits in and that the game abstracts this as him controlling every function of the tank for most of the mission, but the rest of the crew spends the mission telling him what to do rather than the other way around) blows a road block and takes out an IED under gunfire, because the bomb squad guy is too cowardly to do it. His loader lampshades it by saying "you ought to collect that guy's salary, dude. You just did his job". Averted, however, by switching to Miller, Lt. Hawkins (weapon systems officer for a Super Hornet) or Dima (Russian GRU) for scenes the primary protagonist, Sgt. Blackburn (Marine Recon), was not at or could not feasibly do.
• Breath of Fire IV, given how many sidequests and minigames the main character has to do, you can invoke him to destroy the world by the end of the game.
• The Call of Duty series repeatedly has soldiers who are not only capable of using every piece of military equipment imaginable, but repeatedly ordered to use weapons that, by their military rank, they should not be let anywhere near - even the first game had the Russian player character briefly conscripted to take over as commander of a technically-competent but inexperienced tank crew, which in gameplay terms took the form of controlling everything on that tank but its front-mounted machine gun. Of course, this is almost inevitably in some sort of highly-critical emergency with no one else available - there is at least one occasion where someone else actually is tasked to do something (such as destroying some tanks with a Javelin in an early CoD4 level) only to immediately take a bullet to the face, leaving the player to do it instead.
  • This becomes more apparent in the Modern Warfare games. Private Ramirez in the second game is ordered to use anything from sophisticated Predator drones to rocket launchers to plastic explosives like C4, and Private Allen is tasked with being a Deep Cover Agent in a Russian terrorist cell. Allen at least possibly has the excuse, flimsy as it may be, that he's drafted into Task Force 141 because he does really well in "The Pit", and that he's not really meant to accomplish anything other than get killed and implicate America in a massacre. Ramirez really doesn't. This went to the point that "Ramirez! Do everything!" became a meme.
  • Soap even Lampshades this in the second mission of Modern Warfare 2, in the section where the player sneaks through an airfield under the cover of a blizzard while he supports you with a thermal-scoped sniper rifle. If you leave him to kill patrolling enemies by alerting them or just getting close enough, without killing them yourself, he'll eventually complain "I guess I have to do everything?", referring to his status as a player character in the first Modern Warfare.
  • Deconstructed in Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. The player character Nick Reyes starts the game as a lowly lieutenant and leader of a small squad before suddenly getting an emergency field promotion to become the captain of a spaceship, and as such literally does not know how to lead from the rear. His inability to delegate is actually pointed out and treated as a character flaw rather than a gameplay mechanic — and it repeatedly bites him in the ass. And in the end, all of Reyes's attempts to put himself in the line of fire so his crew does not have to risk themselves is rendered moot when he has to sacrifice his entire crew to pull off a vital (but suicidal) final stand.
• Jim Walls (who wrote Police Quest) also wrote Codename: ICEMAN, where he takes the trope up a couple of notches. In this game you are playing Westland, a CIA agent instructed to go halfway around the world aboard a USN nuclear submarine in order to infiltrate Tunisia by sea and carry out a hostage rescue all by yourself, preventing a war with the Soviet Union. If this wasn't enough, Westland is also a Commander in the Navy and a skilled nuclear submarine pilot — so naturally he gets to pilot the sub several times during the game and even takes command when the Captain gets injured in a silly accident. But the game truly takes the cake when Westland has to personally inspect and repair a malfunctioning torpedo tube (manufacturing spare parts himself in the machine shop!), otherwise the sub gets sunk during the next combat scene. It should be noted that this is a case of Minimalist Cast; only a handful of crewmembers are ever shown to be on-board the sub, a Los Angeles-class submarine supposedly run by a crew of 130.
• Criminal Case zigzags this. The Player Character's main job is to search for clues and interrogate suspects, while the more detailed analysis of the clues are done by other team members (i.e. the Coroner, Tech Expert, Lab Expert, etc.). However, there are times where these experts delegates the analytical tasks they're supposedly experts in back to the player because it "takes too much time".
• Dragon Age: Inquisition: Played With.
  • Averted with the War Table mechanic. Inquisition power is split between three departments: Forces (Military), Secrets (Spies), and Connections (Diplomacy). The three Advisors in charge of these departments will ask the Inquisitor for clearance to send their subordinates on missions which suit their skills (although most missions can be completed by any department, some are more efficient than others). There's a massive number of missions in the game that the main characters never even have to touch.
  • Played straight with the in-game map areas. The Inquisitor and their companions do everything here, including raiding keeps and forts, saving villages, performing random petty deeds, and fighting dragons and demons. Sometimes this is unavoidable (Fade Rifts can only be closed by the Inquisitor), but sometimes it's downright silly (the Inquisitor could send a small company or group of agents to deliver flowers to a grave site or look for a lost pet—there is no credible reason s/he would need to waste their own time personally). It may be justified by simple efficiency; when you do send teams of agents to gather resources, their output is always a small fraction of what the Inquisitor would gather in person in that time.
• Ensemble Stars! stars a little over 40 main characters (via Rotating Protagonist), and then an undefined number of other students who are never seen (as the story is told Visual Novel style) and never contribute to the plot other than setting atmosphere or serving as convenient enemies to be defeated. It's strange enough in itself that this specific set of idol units is always at the top of any battle rankings, but it becomes downright confusing when clubs are factored in - joining one is mandatory, and they all function perfectly well with just the presence of the main characters (even if some are very small). So where are all these other ghost students? Do they have their own clubs? There's already quite a selection among the main characters, so it's hard to imagine how many more there could be...
• Early Final Fantasy games used this quite a bit. No matter what job the main characters typically held, the second the Call to Adventure rang, they answered.
  • A prominent example is Final Fantasy V, in which four of the five player characters are royalty, and the second anything goes awry, they strike out on a quest to figure out what's going on. Alone. Even when they have entire armies, platoons, and teams of scholars at their command. No wonder one of them ends up dead.
  • Final Fantasy VI does this with both the heroes and the villians. The good guys have King Edgar leave his kingdom to fight himself pretty early in the game. You recruit his brother, Sabin, pretty early, too (although he abdicated the throne before the game started). On the villians' side, Kefka personally fights you several times throughout the game, even though he's shown commanding soldiers.
• The Grand Theft Auto series mostly follows this trope, but zig-zags a bit now and then. From Grand Theft Auto until Grand Theft Auto III the trope was averted, as the protagonist was for the most part totally without support or allies, or simply was the only individual capable of handling the situation. For example, III's protagonist, Claude, was basically a thug who was just out to make a buck while trying to avoid the police, other criminals, and other enemies, taking the opportunity for revenge every now and then when they arose. He seemingly had no aspirations to be anything more than a psycho for hire. But from Vice City on (with the odd break like Liberty City Stories and such), protagonists like Tommy Vercetti became criminal kingpins or such during the course of their stories, having dozens of henchmen at their disposal for doing tasks. But the nature of the game demanded that scenarios be designed where only the Boss could undertake any actual missions, such as said mission might be of a personal nature in some manner, or a matter of honor, or only the protagonist had the skill or competence to do the job, or he is simply a Blood Knight, getting a psychopathic thrill from carnage and/or killing.
• Mass Effect:
  • This is mentioned as one of the reasons why the batarians have failed to advance as far as the other species. Apparently, batarian commanders and other authority figures often indulge in excessive micromanagement to the detriment of their effectiveness.
  • Averted in the Suicide Mission in Mass Effect 2. You need to delegate specific tasks to other party members, and if you don't pick the correct specialists for each role (Tali, Legion or Kasumi for the vent; Jack or Samara for the barrier; Garrus, Miranda or Jacob to lead secondary fireteams), people will die.
  • Played straight with any technological task not specifically flagged for a teammate to do. You can never assign Tali or Kasumi to bypass a door, it has to be Shepard. Hacking a computer system, even with Tali or Legion standing next to you— Shepard again!
  • Played for Laughs in Mass Effect 3, if you assign Vega, whose tech-savvy is mostly limited to cleaning guns and crashing a shuttle, to handle a complicated engineering task on a mission; he'll still do it, but it will mostly consist of fiddling with the wires, then kicking it.
  • Mass Effect: Andromeda: The Pathfinders were intended to handle exploration, diplomacy, research and battle, in roughly that order. In-game, you do all that plus odd jobs for anybody who needs help (though in fairness many tasks fall under the "helping your allies" part of diplomacy). It's explained that Alec Ryder, the PC's father, invented the Pathfinder role, but he died before he had a chance to do anything with it. Alec was formerly an N7, the same as Shepard; this trope is apparently part of their training. You, as the most prominent Pathfinder, get to define the limits of the role... and apparently it includes doing whatever you feel like.
• Justified in the Halo series, as the Master Chief has spent years undergoing Training from Hell to handle every weapon and vehicle used by both humanity and the Covenant. Being a SPARTAN supersoldier, his uniquely important role in ground combat is constantly reinforced by the narrative portraying the Spartans as all that stands between humanity and extinction. He also has the benefit of a highly advanced AI capable of single-handedly operating huge battleships running in his suit. She typically takes over the tasks he cannot, such as hacking, exposition, and troubleshooting.
  • Slightly harder to explain, however, is the ever-present role of Dr. Catherine Halsey, Omnidisciplinary Scientist extraordinaire of the Halo universe. Not only did she personally oversee every aspect of the SPARTAN-II project, from deciding on their physical augmentations down to interviewing and psychologically profiling the candidates; she also did the bulk of the design work for their incredibly advanced Powered Armor, then developed a revolutionary new AI system based on scanning cloned human brains, then became humanity's foremost expert on Covenant and Forerunner technology, and became personally involved with several other main characters such as Captain Keyes to boot. She seems to be pretty much the only reason the UNSC has any working technology or understanding of their enemies at all.
• Kingdom Hearts III both engaged in this excessively and downplayed it at the same time. During the final battle, The Hero Sora fought every member of Organization XIII despite the premise of the battle being seven lights clash with thirteen Darknesses and personal connections between some of the bosses and plot important side characters. Downplayed in that Sora is mostly The Cavalry and the side characters did have their chance to shine as NPC.
• In Mega Man X, X is supposedly only one "hunter" in a large organization. He's not even that high-ranked in the organization despite his accomplishments, being listed in some games as only a B-class Hunter (compared to Zero being S-class), yet often everything that happens in a game is entirely up to him with no justification (except for Mega Man X: Command Mission, where the mission he's on is explicitly an infiltration op that only a small team could be sent for). At best he only ever gets support from Zero, Alia or some other operator, and the later arrival Axl.
• In Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and Metal Gear Solid V, despite being the leader of an entire private army, Big Boss/Snake still does most of the important missions by himself (or with a singular buddy). It can be somewhat excused by Big Boss being the best stealth operative there is, but even during missions where the objective doesn't require stealth (such as Episode 9 of The Phantom Pain), Boss never brings any extra soldiers to back him up or get the mission done quicker. This gets silly when Metal Gears are involved, as Boss has to fight an entire Humongous Mecha by himself with his army at best giving air support. On a logistical level, Diamond Dogs also can't seem to source basic military hardware like mortars, requiring Boss to steal them from his enemies.
• Police Quest danced around this trope several times. Sonny Bonds, the protagonist, started out as a patrol officer who got a temporary reassignment to Narcotics for the final part of the first game (a process known as "seconding", and not uncommon for temporary periods). He was properly promoted to detective and worked Homicide for the duration of the second game. Then, at the start of the third game, Sonny got promoted to Detective Sergeant, but needs to cover a shift for a Patrol Sergeant who's out sick, so he hops back in the patrol car again. He goes back to his role as a skilled homicide detective in the second act.
  • In the second game, Sonny believes that a recently-murdered man's body has been dumped into the local river, so he calls for a police dive team. The dive team van arrives, with only one officer in it, explaining that the second officer isn't available for nebulous reasons. Of course, police procedure prohibits diving alone, but fortunately it turns out that Sonny has a diving certificate and can serve as the dive-buddy. This implies that if a different detective had been investigating the case, he'd basically be screwed. And that diving specialist? He doesn't find anything underwater - he just floats around, occasionally swimming back and forth. It's all up to you.
  • Also, throughout the entirety of PQ2 Keith's actions amount to going back to the car to call the dispatch so that you don't have to.
• Somewhat comically deconstructed in Red Dead Redemption II; turns out, when you make the protagonist run a Playing Both Sides scheme by himself, eventually said parties are going to notice the one guy who helps them showing up doing things for their enemies, and they're going to be mad at the gang who tried to trick them both. Not one of Dutch's best plans, there.
• In the SimCity series of games, you are the mayor of the city. That doesn't explain why you and you alone are the main force handling zoning, road layout, utilities, public safety, parks and recreation, city ordinances, public transit...
• Subverted in The Simpsons Hit & Run. The fifth level is played as Apu, the previous four each being played as a member of the Simpson family.
• Averted in Space Station 13; everyone has a specific job and limited authority. People can get promoted by circumstances or because one of the crewmembers who can do that decided to move them a few steps ahead, or force their way into complete and total rule of the station, but nobody does everything and nobody can do everything.
• Both Star Trek: Elite Force games, despite being about an entire team of trained commandos, always comes down to protagonist Alex Munro handling everything by himself, whether he's ordered to do so, decides to do so himself (after he's put in charge of the Hazard Team), or because the rest of the team is whittled down over time. Lampshaded in the second game when Munro prepares to do this yet again and one member of the team outright asks him why every single mission inevitably comes down to him doing everything by himself; Munro doesn't answer.
• In Twisted Wonderland, Yuu, Ace, Deuce and Grim are usually the ones that help solve the problems of each dorm in the main story with the assistance of the previous overblot victims and their respective dorm members. The only exception so far has been Chapter 4, as Deuce and Ace are Put on a Bus for a majority of the story and only return after the problem has been dealt with. In their place, the Octavinelle trio step up to the plate to solve the Scarabia dorm issue after their curiousity toward the Kalim situation is drawn. And it turns out that it's a good thing that they did decide to help as Yuu and Grim prove to be helpless on their own.
• Valkyria Chronicles, especially in the anime version, would have you believe only Squad 7 actually did anything that moved the war forward and that the Gallian Regulars only existed so we could watch guys in the underdog army die. This gets even more hilarious when you consider the absurdly small size of Squad 7 and the massive size of the Imperial Army by comparison.
  • Which makes their enemies even worse for not bombing, zerg rushing, firing artillery at, flanking, or really doing anything about Squad 7, or simply going around them.
• Played with in The Walking Dead: Season Two. The main character is an 11-year-old girl, and as per usual, she is at least somewhat involved in pretty much everything important that happens to the group. Sometimes the trope is entirely justified, for example when someone small and/or lightweight is required. Sometimes the player is even allowed to call the other characters out for sending a child to do a dangerous task. It's lampshaded at one point when the main human villain points out she's the only credible threat in her group, simply due to the others' sheer incompetence. Sometimes played entirely straight.
  Clementine: That man said he had food in the station.
  Alvin: Mind checking it out?
  Clementine: Why don't you go look?
  Alvin: I'm gonna sit with Bec' for a minute... I'll be right behind you!

Visual Novels

• In Double Homework, the protagonist is the one who both retrieves Dennis's portable hard drive, and finds an unencrypted video that reveals part of the truth about his former summer school class.

Web Animation

• Parodied in the Attack of the Clones episode of How It Should Have Ended, when Obi-Wan is unsuccessfully trying to apprehend Jango Fett.
  Obi-Wan: Could you guys just maybe send a larger ship?
  Mace Windu: No! No, we cannot.
  Yoda: Important Jedi business we have.
  Obi-Wan: All of the Jedi are busy?
  Yoda: Yes. Sit here on cushions, we must.
  Obi-Wan: I'm really doing all of the work, aren't I?

Webcomics

• While the main cast of Exterminatus Now is less of a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits and more of a Dysfunction Junction, as compared to the occasionally contrasted "A team" of the Mobian Inquisition, or even its "C team", they keep being send on sensitive missions, even when their commander isn't trying to kill them off for blackmailing him. Gets lampshaded when Lothar wonders if their commander even has other teams. Ironically, this is the one arc where the C-team actually comes in to bail the protagonists out.
• I Was Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space!!!: Spoofed when the characters are having a Mission Briefing, and someone points out that if everyone's here, who's flying the ship?! They promptly crash.
• Parodied by Schlock Mercenary in an arc affectionately parodying CSI. The Grissom Expy is told off by his supervisor for trying to interrogate Schlock since as a crime scene investigator he has no business interrogating suspects.

Web Videos

• Parodied/justified on Agents of Cracked. Their boss doesn't remember the phone extensions for any of the other employees.
• Gordon Freeman of Freeman's Mind. Everyone else is busy dying to aliens, making Freeman's life harder, or just standing places doing nothing at all, so Freeman has to do a lot of legwork on his quest to get the hell out of Black Mesa. He's not happy about it, complaining that when people talk about being an One-Man Army, they mean that they're a badass, not that they're doing all the work one would expect from an entire army.

Western Animation

• In Archer, when something needs to be done in ISIS, it's only limited to the core eight cast members doing something about it, the rest of the other nameless employees in the office do nothing but just be there to show how busy the office is.
  • By early Season 3 it becomes clear that ISIS, despite being a dedicated spy agency, only has three active field agents: Archer, Lana, and Ray (and the latter actually began life as a support agent in his first appearance, before being retconned into fieldwork). This becomes obvious when Ray is apparently struck by a life-changing injury and Malory feels she has no choice but to promote Cyril to field agent, after roughly six hours of bad training from Archer that took place maybe two years ago, to cover his cases.
  • Not only that but it seems to get worse over time: by the end of Season 3, Cyril and Pam, the ISIS Comptroller and HR Director respectively (both of which often seem to be the only people in their respective departments) also become full fledged field agents.
  • It becomes even more ridiculous when you take into account that there was an entire Season 1 episode devoted to how essential the support staff is and how the characters are hopelessly lost without them. By the time Season 3 rolls around, said support staff has all but disappeared except for Ray who, you guessed it, started going into the field with the main cast.
  • And now as of Season 6 the main eight cast members literally do everything, since everyone else left ISIS after it got shut down by the CIA and weren't there when Malory got it back.
  • This trope is lampshaded in "Drastic Voyage: Part 1". Slater insists on sending Pam, Cyril, Krieger, and Cheryl on the mission even though they're not field agents because he knows no matter what he does they'll somehow find a way to get into the field anyway.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Team Avatar (plus Iroh) become the only game-changers in the Hundred-Year War. Even more in the finale, when Aang stops Ozai from destroying Ba Sing Se and then rest of the Earth Kingdom (justified because he's the Avatar); Zuko and Katara are the only ones who wrest Azula from becoming Fire Lord despite her becoming increasingly unpopular in the Fire Nation; Sokka, Toph and Suki are the only ones putting any effort neutralizing the rest of the airships attempting to raze the Earth Kingdom; and Iroh is the only one who can assemble the White Lotus to take back Ba Sing Se from the Fire Nation, this being more egregious because Ozai's entire plan to burn down the Earth Kingdom is in response to the Earthbender rebellions, but Bumi (among the White Lotus) is the only one seen to be actively liberating Ba Sing Se.
• Camp Candy: The camp has several employees, but John the camp owner and Molly the nurse do everything in most episodes.
• In Danger Mouse, hardly any agents other then DM and Penfold are ever seen. In the reboot, other agents appear more frequently, but still aren't shown doing much.
• Used both ways in The Dreamstone. The Land of Dreams is protected by a population of magical Wuts and the omni-powerful wizard, the Dream Maker, while Viltheed consists of the Evil Sorcerer Zordrak and his enormous army of Urpneys. Despite this, most episodes narrow the feud down to "Rufus and Amberley vs. Sgt Blob, Frizz and Nug", with other characters only ever coming into the fray when one of them is genuinely on the ropes. While this is Lampshaded frequently in the villains' case (Frizz and Nug are usually the only ones who can be dragged into a mission), the heroes' reasoning seems based on pure suspension of disbelief (though one episode shrewdly implied the Noops were aware they always get handed the dirty work).
• In The Fairly OddParents!, Timmy seems to be the only kid with fairies who makes wishes that alter reality. Mainly because the others are implicitly too sensible to make the boneheaded mistakes Timmy does to twice a week. When Chloe was introduced to share Cosmo and Wanda, she made big mistakes too.
• In the Family Guy episode "12-and-a-half Angry Men", the jury in Mayor West's trial consists entirely of A-list and B-list characters. This includes Brian — a dog. Plus, Joe, a precinct cop, serves as the bailiff (though this is hilariously lampshaded).
• In Futurama, the Planet Express team gets commissioned to do various improbable things, such as in "A Big Piece of Garbage", in which they are put in charge of planting a bomb on the titular ball. Flimsily justified by reference to the fact that they're the only people willing/contractually obligated to take on such a suicidal mission.
• While G.I. Joe has hundreds of characters (about one per every task that might need doing), mainly due to never featuring all of the characters in any one episode, it's extremely common to see one specialist doing the job of another. In particular, nearly every member of the team is apparently qualified in flying modern jet fighters, and do so often. Perhaps this is why they end up causing so much damage to the cities they're assigned to protect from Cobra.
• In Grossology, very little focus is put on Grossologists other than Abby and Ty.
• In Inside Job (2021), the main characters are constantly doing field operations to maintain the various conspiracies they're in charge of keeping in place, despite the fact that most of them are departmental heads at Cognito Inc. who have countless people under them that they can order to do these tasks instead. Ridley in particular is high enough on the corporate leader that everyone else reports to her, while she reports directly to the CEO, with her main goal throughout the series being to become CEO herself.
• In Inspector Gadget, agents other than Gadget are very rarely seen, if ever. In the reboot, agents other than Gadget and Penny are frequently seen, but mostly just stand around doing nothing.
• Justice League:
  • Played with in one episode. Main character and "world's greatest detective" Batman doesn't find any evidence at a crime scene, and suggests minor character The Atom come to find anything he might've missed. However, he apparently doesn't find anything either.
  • In the first episode of Unlimited, "Initiation", it's explicitly stated that one of the reasons the Justice League expanded its membership so much was so that it could avert this trope. There wasn't any need to have Superman or Green Lantern deal with a situation that could be handled by Green Arrow or Stargirl, letting the heavy hitters stay in reserve to deal with the major problems.
• In The Legend of Zelda (1989), both Link and Zelda (when the latter hasn't been captured), who are apparently Hyrule's only capable fighters, set off to confront Ganon, with no escort, and leaving no one to defend the castle. It approaches the point of absurdity in "Cold Spells" and "A Hitch in the Works", when Zelda wants the castle cleaned, she personally gives the orders, and orders Link and Spryte to do the cleaning. Link is the hero, who should be guarding the Triforce and saving Zelda (although even these roles conflict at times). Spryte is a fairy princess. Aside from Doof the handyman, there is no evidence that the castle has any kind of service staff.
• In Patrol 03, the three main characters handle most of the policework. Justified, as every other member of the force is either corrupt or incompetent.
• In The Simpsons, members of the family tend to get involved in affairs of other characters, with varying degrees of justification.
  • Often, one Simpson is the cause of, and another is the solution to, the problem that befalls Springfield:
    • In "Homer vs. the Eighteenth Amendment", Prohibition gets started because Bart drinks at the Saint Patrick's Day Parade, and Homer works to reverse it.
    • In "Sweets and Sour Marge", Homer indirectly, and Marge directly, causes the sugar ban, and Homer works to reverse it.
  • Apparently enforced, according to the DVD Commentary for "Who Shot Mr. Burns? (Part 2)"; one writer suggested that the shooter be Barney, but it was decided that it should be someone from the family (it's Maggie).
  • In "Homer the Smithers", Mr. Burns tries to force Smithers to take a vacation. Smithers appears to agree, though looks on his own to find someone too incompetent to handle his job so he can get back to it immediately — but then his computer doesn't bother narrowing down from 714 "finalists", to which he decides, "nuts to this, I'll just go get Homer Simpson." Lampshaded in the DVD commentary as an excuse to get to this trope.
  • Deconstructed in "The Day the Violence Died", in which the episode sees that Bart is seemingly on the verge of saving the Itchy and Scratchy studio from bankruptcy, only to see that a look-alike named Lester beat him to the punch. Lisa teasingly tells Bart, "It looks like you might have a little competition all of a sudden," only to learn afterward that Lester has his own brainy sister named Eliza. Then it turns out that the two kids not only additionally saved Apu Nahasapeemapetilon from spending time in jail for public nudity (which Bart and Lisa were working on during the brief moment they gave up on saving Itchy and Scratchy), but Lester also reunited Krusty with his estranged wife (which Bart was unaware of). The episode ends with Bart and Lisa finding the fact that they aren't the ones who saved the day for once unsettling.
    Lisa: I don't understand it. We're always the ones who solve these problems.
  • Lampshaded in "Lisa's Date with Density" when Chief Wiggum says "You know, in most cities, the Chief of Police doesn't even go out on calls like these."
  • One blatant example is "Eight Misbehavin'", in which Homer helps Apu steal back his children from the Zoo, with no explanation given except possibly that Homer is up for any kind of hijinks.
  • In "Insane Clown Poppy", Krusty picks Homer out of several people for parental advice, and after Krusty bets and loses his daughter's violin to the mob and has to get it back, the Simpsons are inexplicably the first people he goes to for help. Lampshaded:
    Krusty: You'd really help me take on the mob?
    Homer: For a casual acquaintance like you? Absolutely.
  • Similarly, in "The Lastest Gun in the West", Marge explains to a confused Buck that she's helping him solve his alcohol problem because "I just naturally assumed it was some of my business." He responds "Nobody's even told me your name yet."
  • In "Mr. Spritz Goes to Washington", the Simpsons motivate Krusty to run for Congress so he could shift the air flight traffic away from their house. When it turns out Krusty has no actual power within Congress, the Simpson family, with guidance from Walter Mondale, take matters into their own hands by attaching Krusty's airline rerouting bill to a more popular bill and preventing two congressmen from objecting to it (with Bart blackmailing one of them and Homer drinking the other under the table).
• In Skylanders Academy, Team Spyro (Spyro, Steath Elf, Eruptor, Jet-Vac and Pop Fizz), despite being a new team of Skylanders in-universe, are the only ones who participate in most battles, teach classes, and are generally the only ones that Master Eon calls and spends more time with them. All other Skylanders are side characters or Skylander cadets in the Alternate Continuity of this series
• Star Trek: Lower Decks:
  • "Crisis Point": Lampshaded by Boimler. In the holomovie, when the Cerritos is sent on a mission to investigate a ship claiming to be Starfleet, Boimler points out that, in reality, Starfleet would be more likely to send the Enterprise.
  • "Grounded" has a hard subversion to this trope. With Captain Freeman on trial for something she didn't do, her daughter Mariner and the other Lower Deckers try to hunt down evidence to prove her innocence with the former even attempting to hijack the Cerritos to do so. All of this is done as Mariner believes that Starfleet will use Freeman as a scapegoat because she's a captain of a California-class, a ship that's usually seen as The Unfavorite. As it turns out, they didn't need to as Freeman was safe and sound — it was a False Flag Operation in order to find out the truth by hunting down the true criminals. All that ended up happening is Mariner is now on her last chance with Starfleet and she's on a short leash.
• Steven Universe: The Crystal Gems have been narrowed down to only Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl (and Steven). Other members have been mentioned, and at the time of The Great Offscreen War they were a sizeable group, but the main characters are currently the only ones active, because Rose was only able to save Garnet and Pearl, who were right next to her, from the corruption bomb, with Amethyst emerging later. However, the only old Crystal Gem who actually appears is Bismuth, and arguably the Cluster, formed of the shards of gems shattered in the war. Even in Garnet's flashback to the original rebellion in The Answer, the only members shown are Rose Quartz and Pearl, although since this is a story Garnet is telling Steven, she's probably simplifying things because those are the only two he'd recognize. She is not. Rose Quartz and Pearl really were the only members at that time. Garnet was the first real recruit to the cause.
• Done to extreme levels in Supa Strikas. The only coaching staff is the man only known as Coach. There are no medical staff, and the players are frequently seen treating each other (or sent to a hospital). When something needs to be fixed or a mystery needs to be solved, a player (and at times Spenza, a friend of the players) take care of it which can cause them to miss parts of the game. The opposition teams do the same, with whatever mean trick they do usually done by their star player.
• SWAT Kats: Aside from his chauffeur, a helicopter pilot and a speedboat driver, Manx has no staff besides Callie that we see. No assistants, press secretaries, bodyguards, etc. Callie pretty much does everything, even things that would be beneath an actual deputy mayor to do, such as writing speeches and press releases and generally being Manx's gofer (he calls her his "troubleshooter").
• Thomas & Friends: Thomas is a short-range locomotive with his own branch line to run. Yet from series 3 onwards, running his branch line was about the only thing he hardly ever seemed to do. The same could be applied to any of the main characters.
  • This is further amplified from Season 8 onwards with the concept of the Steam Team being introduced. Most of the episodes in the future seasons put one of those characters in focus, which causes some character regression or derailment in some cases. This also leaves other established characters pushed in the sidelines or left out entirely.
  • While this problem was slightly alleviated in Seasons 17-21, it resurged in Season 22 onwards due to the Steam Team overhaul. The special "Steam Team to the Rescue" shows how much seems to now rely on the seven. Despite the numerous count of engines, the majority of the workload is shown to be done by the seven Steam Team engines, especially during the final scene at Brendam Docks. There are engines who work the Brendam Branch Line, but they're never shown helping there. Only when the Steam Team gets involved does the pile-up get resolved.
  • Granted, this is a Franchise Original Sin dating back to the original books; Word of God explained that there are over 80 engines on Sodor, most of whom we've never seen.
• In T.U.F.F. Puppy, most of the actual work done in TUFF is done by Dudley, Kitty, Keswick, and The Chief. The rest of the staff in TUFF do little, or are absent entirely.

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