Basic Trope: Earth is faced with a hostile invasion by extraterrestrial forces.
- Straight: The Xenospawn fleet arrives in our solar system and proceeds to land on Earth and open fire on all human nations.
- Exaggerated:
- They won't stop until every inch of the planet is conquered and colonized, from the deep ocean vents to the Himalayas.
- The Xenospawn plans the conquer Earth and any other world that humans have colonized.
- The Xenospawn is effectively a race of Eldritch Abominations and their invasion basically shifts the story into a Cosmic Horror Story in all but name.
- The Dirty Communists Xenospawn pull a Jackboot on the planet Earth and turn them into their Commie Land.
- Downplayed: The Xenospawn only aim to conquer one specific part of Earth, and cease all further military action when they do.
- Justified:
- The Xenospawn originated on prehistoric Earth and want their lands back; unfortunately disregarding those who currently live there.
- They are engaged in a religious quest to conquer (or reconquer) their supposedly rightful land.
- The people of Earth started a war and they come to finish it one way or another.
- They want something only found on Earth (or they're racing against the clock and Earth is the best they can do), and they are sufficiently evil or ruthless to not care about the local inhabitants (us).
- Inverted:
- The Xenospawn are a primitive civilization and humanity invades their homeworld.
- Benevolent Alien Invasion
- The capitalist Darwinist Earth Empire invades People's Democratic Republic of Xenospawn and staged a coup on their governments.
- Subverted: The Xenospawn at first seem to be invading Earth, but it is soon apparent that it was an attempt to stop humanity from doing something that could potentially destroy itself.
- Double Subverted: ..Only it turns out that this "something" was the sole thing that would have repelled their, currently on-route to Earth, invasion fleet.
- Parodied: The Xenospawn have no reason to invade, but decide to do so because they receive Earth's television waves, including all invasion movies, and believe that invasion is the normal protocol for First Contact on this planet.
- Zig Zagged: The Xenospawn invade, but Earth receives help from another race called the Spawnomorphs. Then the Spawnomorphs reveal that they shooed off the Xenospawn because they wanted the Earth for themselves. Humanity retaliates and, in the ensuing battle between human and Spawnomorph fleets, the Xenospawn take advantage of the situation to launch another attack...
- Averted: The Xenospawn are not interested in invading Earth at all.
- Enforced: The producers want to show humanity united against a common enemy.
- Lampshaded: The Xenospawn cadet asks his commander why they have to invade every planet they find. The commander responds that they're Xenospawn: that's what they do.
- Invoked: Professor Bob, Well-Intentioned Extremist Mad Scientist, makes contact with a Xenospawn ship and comes to believe the aliens' morality is superior to man's and that Earth would be better off under their control, so he intentionally "invites them", secretly giving military secrets and helping to set up the invasion.
- Exploited: Similar to the above, but the Xenospawn invade first, and Professor Bob allies with them later.
- Defied:
- The Xenospawn commander wants to invade Earth, but his leader knows that would be wrong, and attempts to convince him that peace should be pursued.
- Alternatively, Earth President Alice knows the Xenospawn are searching for a new homeworld and may be interested on Earth, so she promptly offers them asylum on the Earth's moon instead, with all terraforming assistance Earth can provide.
- The Xenospawn leader slaps down the Xenospawn commander's plan to invade Earth saying that it is a waste of time, effort and personnel when resources could more easily be gotten from any of the uninhabited planets in the Solar System.
- Discussed: President Alice suspects the Xenospawn are planning a hostile attack. Professor Bob points out that "this isn't a cheap sci-fi movie".
- Conversed: Alice and Bob talk about the latest alien invasion movie they've seen.
- Implied: It's the distant future. The Earth is in ruins and in a very unfavorable political situation with the Xenospawn, but we're never told what happened.
- Deconstructed:
- We see all the time and resources the Xenospawn need to build and mobilize huge fleets through the vast distances of space; the leaders carefully planning ahead their tactics and how to ensure the natives are annihilated without the soon-to-be-colonized world being devastated; the angsty soldiers light-years away from their families, wondering if all of this is worth it.
- Or, the Xenospawn actually bother to take advantage of their vast technological superiority over the Earthlings. Instead of deploying expendable ground troops to directly attack the Earth's surface, they just repeatedly nuke the planet from orbit, effectively destroying most or all of the human defenders.
- While the Xenospawn fleet do have technological superiority and good tactics, they're still fighting on a planet that's essentially alien to them. They are completely unfamiliar with Earth's terrain and, because they've spent most of their lives on a Single-Biome Planet, are caught off guard by foreign weather patterns. This gives the Earthlings something of an advantage over the more advanced Xenospawn.
- The Xenospawn fleet is merely 'invading' the rest of the Solar System - why bother with even going against the potential meager resistance from Humanity when you can get resources from the lifeless rocks and uninhabitable gas giants with virtually no hassle? Humanity may get pissed off at seeing the resources that they could use in the future get plundered, but at their primitive stage of development they can't really do anything about it.
- Reconstructed
- Due to having vastly different brain structures and priorities than humanity, the Xenospawn handle the mental rigors of invasion much better than the Puny Earthlings they are pitted against: even if it does have some effect on their morale.
- The Xenospan plan to colonise earth,and so nuking it into oblivion is counter-productive... However, they are still immensely sore losers and still have the nukes as a fallback. It's a race to not only defeat the aliens, but thwart their fallback-plan if the invasion is prevented.
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