Melee A Trois / Live-Action TV

• Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Conan O'Brien staged one of these over who was ultimately responsible for Mike Huckabee's political showing. This one did start with an alliance, between Stewart and Colbert, but that was quickly abandoned because the true Mêlée à Trois is funnier. The Colbert Nation provides an alternate name for this one: menage a awesome. (Let the record also show that the whole thing was concocted as a way to "waste time on all three of our shows" during the writers' strike.)
• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. does this a fair bit, with most seasons having several different factions all fighting each other. Season 2, for example, had S.H.I.E.L.D. vs. HYDRA vs. the US military vs. Skye's father, Calvin Zabo, and later S.H.I.E.L.D. vs. HYDRA vs. Ward vs. the Inhumans vs. the self-proclaimed "Real S.H.I.E.L.D.".
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In one episode, a fight breaks out between Buffy vs. a cowboy vampire vs. a horde of innocent bystanders under mind control by a demon. Buffy and the vampire don't actually team up, but they do take a break from fighting each other to focus on the bystanders. A person just tuning in might think they were on the same side.
• Sheridan's forces in Babylon 5 engineer one of these against the Vorlon and Shadow fleets.
• This is very much a thing of the Heisei (post-2000) series of Kamen Rider starting from Kamen Rider Ryuki as mentioned below. Multiple riders make for some very complicated conflicts sometimes. Considering that every rider in Ryuki and its US counterpart Kamen Rider Dragon Knight has their own motivation and goal, this is bound to happen. It's even the whole point of Ryuki in nutshell.
• Daredevil: The climax of the season 3 finale involves one in Wilson Fisk's penthouse, between Dex (who wants to kill Vanessa out of revenge for Fisk killing Julie, and Matt too while he's at it), Matt (who wants to bring down Fisk and Dex, clear his alter ego's name, and also stop Dex from killing Vanessa) and Fisk (who wants both Dex and Matt dead and keep Vanessa safe). Fisk eventually takes Dex out of the equation by breaking his spine, so it's just him and Matt now.
• Doctor Who:
  • In the 1965 serial "The Chase", The Doctor and his companions visit several different planets and time periods, each new stop introducing them to a new antagonist of some sort. However, the entire time they are also being chased by The Daleks in their own time travel device who simply want to kill The Doctor and his friends. For every different location The Doctor and his companions visit, the Daleks end up fighting whatever new enemy is there as well, although the "Daleks vs new foe" bits are used mainly as a gag, which reaches its climax in the final battle between the Daleks and the Mechanoids which ultimately results in them destroying each other while also unintentionally buying The Doctor and co enough time to escape both enemies within the chaos.
  • In the episode "Doomsday", there is theoretically a three-way battle between the Daleks, the humans, and the Cybermen. However, it is effectively a one-sided Curb-Stomp Battle by the Daleks against everything else.
• Lost was, for its first three seasons, a conflict between the Oceanic flight 815 crash survivors and the mysterious Others. However, the survivors essentially wiped out the Others in the season 3 finale, just as the third combatant, a freighter with a mercenary team sent to kill everyone on the island, arrived. Both the survivors and the Others had separate conflicts with the freighter, though by the end of season 4 the survivors and Others had teamed up and successfully repelled the freighter.
• Most Dangerous Game Season 1 consists of a few brief examples. While the hunters are all collectively chasing Dodge and not each other, they are not working as a team and want to be the sole person to kill Dodge. Near the beginning, Nixon sees Reagan taking Dodge to another location with a knife at his side, and Nixon proceeds to stop the escalator they are on to allow Dodge to run away before pursuing Dodge himself. A couple scenes later, at the Subway, Nixon and Reagan have a brief stand off which ends rather quickly. Later, when Dodge is captured by a group of thugs, one of the hunters breaks in and rapidly shoots all of the thugs, as well as another one of the hunters also trying to get in, before attempting to kill Dodge once more.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode "Warrior of the Lost World" features a big fight meet between the various rag-tag gangs who eventually team up to overthrow the evil Empire.
• Person of Interest:
  • The first season finale "Firewall" features this for its second half. Reese is trying to save psychologist Caroline Turing with Carter and Fusco as backup, Dirty Cop organization HR is trying to kill her because a hit was put out on her, and there's an FBI task force trying to kill Reese because they think he's a gun for hire. It turns out that two of those three parties are being played by Turing, who is actually the cyberterrorist Root: she put the hit out on herself, HR tried to cash in, and the entire point of the scheme was to draw out Reese and Finch in a chance to get in touch with the Machine because Root knew that Reese and Finch would not hesitate to help a seemingly helpless woman.
  • "Aletheia" has Team Machine end up in one against Northern Lights, the shadowy government agency that gets the Machine numbers relevant to national security, and Vigilance, Western Terrorists opposed to government surveillance. The actual fight ends up with Northern Lights effortlessly defeating Vigilance and Team Machine disappearing. In the end Decima Technologies is the real winner, having already achieved the prize, the alternative to the machine.
• This happened in the two melee matches in the first round of each heat during the 4th, 6th and 7th series of Robot Wars, with the contestants thrown into the arena in two groups to cut the numbers down to four so the survivors could be paired off against each other in the second round. In the 4th Wars there were two 3-way fights with the first robot knocked out eliminated, while in the 6th and 7th Wars there were four robots in each melee with half of the eight contestants being eliminated at once (the 3rd and 5th Wars instead had four one-on-one fights in the first round, while the first two series instead used the Gauntlet and the Trials to eliminate two of the contestants before the battle stage even started). Taken to extremes in the Annihilator episodes, where six robots were thrown into the ring at once and battled until one was eliminated, over and over until at the end of five rounds there was only one robot left standing.
• Sekai Ninja Sen Jiraiya often has Jiraiya vs. the Sorcerers Clan vs. the World Ninja of the Week in each episode. Occasionally the latter two will team up, though the Sorcerers Clan usually end up betraying them.
• Stargate Atlantis developed a three-cornered fight between the Atlantis team, the Wraith, and the Asuran Replicators. Although there was never a three-way battle; the closest is when Atlantis pulled an Enemy Mine with the Wraith to take out the Replicators.
• Has happened more than once in the various Super Sentai and Power Rangers series. It's a sort of tradition to have The Dragon interrupt a Monster of the Week about to win so he can beat the Ranger(s) himself. Whether this results in a Mêlée à Trois or not varies from series to series. Kaitou Sentai Lupinranger VS Keisatsu Sentai Patranger redefines the concept, with Rangers fighting each other as well as the monsters. Time will tell if cops Rangers and thieves Rangers will finally team up.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine develops one in the lead-up to the Dominion War. The Klingons launch an invasion of a newly democratic Cardassian Union.^note Based on the grounds that, there's no possible way a civilian uprising could overthrow a military government -> the Cardassians have been infiltrated by changelings. The Federation tells their erstwhile allies to knock it off, to which the Klingons respond by breaking off the alliance and then attacking the Federation when they provide protection to the Cardassian government. The real winner in this is the Dominion, which hasn't gone to open war yet but is working in the shadows to play the Klingons, Federation, and Cardassians off against each other to pave the way for their invasion. All they had to do was plant the suggestion and then let the Klingons be Klingons.
• The Tonight Show: The Great Late Night Debate of 2009-2010.
• The Ultra Series tends to have these happening when two Kaiju shows up and fight each other over territorial dispute, and the Ultra of the show trying to prevent them from doing further damage.
  • Return of Ultraman have the predator kaiju, Gudon, attacking its prey, Twin Tail, and Ultraman Jack fighting them simultaneously, twice, in a two-part episode. Firstly in the big city, which ended in a stalemate when all 3 combatants are too exhausted to continue and are forced to retreat, then later in a construction site in which Gudon mauls Twin Tail to death, before getting defeated by Ultraman Jack.
  • Averted a couple of episodes earlier featuring the two duelling kaijus, Detton and Sadola. The moment Jack shows up, both kaijus put their differences aside and gangs up on Jack.
  • Ultraman Taro have another predator kaiju, Birdon attacking its prey, Kemjila, and Ultraman Taro getting in between them. It didn't end well, because Taro ends up getting killed by Birdon while fighting Kemjila, and Kemjila ends up getting killed soon after.
  • An earlier and downplayed example in the original show, Ultraman features two ancient monsters, Banila and Aboras which are arch-enemies, fighting in a stadium while the Science Patrol tries to destroy both monsters from the sidelines. The Science Patrol decides to focus their attack on Banila until Aboras had the upper hand, killing Banila with its Acid Spit. By the time Ultraman shows up to deal with Aboras its strictly one-on-one.
  • Ultraman Mebius has a Mythology Gag to Return of Ultraman in an episode bringing back Gudon and Twin Tail, and once again they're fighting each other. However, the fight is soon interrupted by new villain Bogar who reveals her monstrous form. The three monsters fought each other briefly, but it quickly ends with Bogar devouring both Gudon and Twin Tail.
  • Late into Ultraman Trigger: New Generation Tiga, shortly after the arrival of Trigger Dark, Ultraman Trigger fights him and while still battling his counterpart, a new monster of Hudram's arrives: Metsu-Orga, who goes on a rampage to devour everything in sight, Ultraman Trigger and Trigger Dark included. For most of the battle the two Ultras spends as much time beating up each other as they did fighting Metsu-Orga, but eventually they have to put aside their differences when Metsu-Orga morphs into its One-Winged Angel form: Metsu-Orochi.
• Series 7 of Waterloo Road features the rival gangs of the Dale Sken Crew and the Murray Set Boyz clashing in and near Waterloo Road school, with the school's faculty attempting to purge said gang warfare from the facility.
• Z Nation: "White Light" consists primarily of a battle between the main group, a group of bounty hunters, and Murphy who doesn't want to go with either.