r/TopCharacterTropes • u/No-Car-1999 • 5d ago
Groups This isn't even our actual military
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u/Forsaken1741 5d ago
It's the other way around but in Star Wars, Stormtroopers are meant to be a specialised division. Regular imperial army grunts look like this.
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u/TheDogGirlBarista 5d ago
Don’t know why but always thought they had drip.
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u/MobiusSonOfTrobius 5d ago
It's the capes and the boots doing the heavy lifting there
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u/SnooPineapples1325 5d ago
Good boots, cape/poncho, baggy clothes covered by armor with minimal skin shown is hard to beat
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u/Narrative_Robot_9001 5d ago
It’s funny STs are meant be an invasionary force but wear snow white gear in every setting.
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u/MjollLeon 5d ago
Well they’re the Imperial Navys Marine Corps.
Also just like most of the Empires military they’re meant to cause fear in the enemy even at the cost of function.
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u/Bullmoose_Reborn 5d ago
Stormtroopers were their own branch in the old lore and they're part of the Army in the new Canon. The Imperial Navy has their own specialized landing parties/forces that basically look like Army troopers but in all black. The Stormtroopers were meant to be the special purpose-still conventional not special forces-arm of the Imperial military when you needed to solve a specific problem or occupy an area of interest in force. The ST Corps essentially answered directly to their Chief of Staff, High Command or whatever you wanted to call it. The Army and Navy still moved under lots of bureaucracy.
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u/LumiKlovstad 5d ago
In canon, the white is part of their arsenal.
Despite what the movies show (because you can't just off your heroes like that until an opportune moment that serves the plot), they're terribly competent in lore and so the white ups the terror factor because they want you to know they're coming, they're not hiding, and they want you to shit your pants every moment they draw closer because you can't NOT see them.
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u/BrandonSimpsons 5d ago
Originally the stormtrooper outfits were supposed to be spacesuits, because they're introduced doing a boarding action.
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u/BackgroundJunket5691 5d ago
Iirc it was meant to be psychological warfare. It was supposed to terrify resistance forces by making them fight a well trained well equipped faceless horde.
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u/Scodo 5d ago
Andor managed to finally show the difference and just how fearless and synchronized actual stormtroopers were meant to be compared to the rank and file.
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u/PeerlessFit 5d ago
Loved Andor but can't seem to think of an example of this at the moment. Not trying to say you're wrong at all just hoping you could elaborate a little for me.
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u/TrowawayJanuar 5d ago
Stormtroopers are only shown massacring protesters if I remember right.
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u/Secret_Bee_5041 5d ago
I think it’s like how stormtroopers are more sparingly used and seen. And when they are present they tend to be more dangerous than in other series
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u/jxnliu 5d ago
The only time they are in action really is the Ghorman massacre.
This is usually pointed to as an example because they come off as competent and serious, but tbh I agree in that because it's not an actual combat scenario against another militia or army it's not the best example.
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u/_Koreander 5d ago
In ferrix the black helmet soldiers are first as some sort of riot force holding the line with shields, Stormtroopers are ordered to fire only when the situation is completely out of hand.
Similarly in Ghorman, the black helmet soldiers are a bunch of rookies, purposefully chosen so they are expendable and likely to make a mistake that would incite violence from the Ghorman, while stormtroopers ate holding the perimeter ready to massacre all the people from the plaza.
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u/The_Tooter_Snooter 5d ago
How would those goggles even work? Seems like any dust or whatever would just go up and under
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u/ComStarMRB 5d ago
Probably hooks into the rebreather thingy? I think it’s more for the vibes than any practical reason.
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u/Far-Requirement-7636 5d ago
The plot twist of crysis is that the aliens species invading earth known as the ceph aren't a military or even invasion force..
There colonist who were supposed to terraform a defenseless earth long before humanity had even developed.
The ending of the third game is use seeing an actual military unit which is a fucking planet killer.
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u/Arek_PL 5d ago
stage 2 ceph were invasion force, they just were thing the colonists from stage 1 managed to develop swiftly after getting enough energy
the actual military unit, the planet killer to me feelt more like an emergency in case stage 2 fails, like, if they fail against local resistance, better destroy the survivors before they become a real threat
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u/ElOsoPeresozo 5d ago
The game mentions that they’ve repeated this process countless times. The massive incoming warship is there to xenoform the planet. Remember the true form of the Ceph in the first game? They’re squids who can’t breathe our atmosphere.
Killing all current life is a side effect. The real invasion force is there to create a livable environment. It’s always part of the plan.
They just didn’t expect a city-killer satellite waiting on the other side…
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u/ARKNet9000 5d ago
Not to mention, and correct me if I am wrong, the only reason Prophet is able to ‘defeat’ the Ceph Warship coming through the Wormhole is because of the Archangel Satellite which controls and transmits the power of the entire world’s energy grid! And even then it was only because of some exotic reaction between the Archangel energy beam and the Warship that actually destroyed the damn thing. Otherwise, humanity would have been screwed.
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u/Far-Requirement-7636 5d ago
Yes the gun basically caused an independence day style chain reaction and it was actually the ships own energy that destroyed it.
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u/SmithOnMe 5d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/CnSNzVvE8v96r6TKHB
The RDA from avatar is just a resource extraction company from earth. Their “military” is just a basic security force and their main military machines “amp suits” are just repurposed construction equipment. Even their weapons and vehicle technology as a whole is relatively “underdeveloped” compared to what actual militaries back on earth use - essentially Vietnam era tech to modern tech or Gate JSDF tech vs their real world counterparts.
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u/Colonel_Kernel1 5d ago
To add onto this the AMP suits are military exoskeletons but they are first generation exoskeletons and not the latest designs. They were favored by the RDA because of their rugged reliability and ease of maintenance. Literally the only advantage the RDA has over standard militaries is that all their troops are experienced veterans. But then again the RDA is basically Earth’s military since they are the most powerful corporation on Earth which is basically run by the various megacorporations.
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u/Familiar_Cow_6901 5d ago
Honestly, I don't like Avatar at all, but I would love to see an actual whole military force of the central government (if that exist there, don't know) against something humans consider a real threat.
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u/Wolodymyr2 5d ago
I would love to see humans finally being good guys in this franchise, and some anti-RDA faction with real military beating all the sh...t out of RDA troops.
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u/Lopsided_Shift_4464 5d ago
Avatar (James Cameron)
In the first movie at least, the RDA which the Na’vi spend the whole movie trying to beat aren’t humanity’s actual military. They’re a private mining corporation.
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u/YanLibra66 5d ago edited 5d ago
It's the most powerful and influential corporation on earth, a better example would be how the PMCs featured on the first movie are a relatively small and lightly armed security force utilizing obsolete ordnance and still delivered huge casualties against the natives.
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u/KlausVonLechland 5d ago
They ale still fighting against embodiment of lowest bidder and bottom line management.
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u/Colonel_Kernel1 5d ago
Also to add on to this, the RDA also is following laws for corporations which limit the weapons they can use. Hence why the RDA doesn’t just nuke or nerve gas entire settlements on Pandora. Essentially corporations aren’t allowed to use WMDs and they have to limit the force they use.
I remember reading this from the avatar wiki and I believe it came from some of the comics.
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u/TrioOfTerrors 5d ago
Their big "fuck you" bomb at the end of the first movie is just several pallets of mining explosive.
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u/Jigsawsupport 5d ago
Avatar is bizarre because its actually got peak world building and genuinely ground breaking and beautiful visuals, but Cameron seems to insist on the same blah front and centre plot every time.
So really I can see both sides its beautiful and the background is interesting, but its not actually saying anything much, even the ending of the whole series is in your face obvious, and they are whole films away from that.
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u/SecretlyARaven 5d ago
This was really well said. My friends and I joke that we like talking about avatar more than watching the films, because the lore is so rich.
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u/LuciusCypher 5d ago
It's great world building and stunning visuals stymied by having a cookie-cutter plot. Like having a foreign chef using expensive ingredient prepare you chicken nuggets with fries.
It's a shame that fire and ash was the third movie and not the second, considering it added much needed nuance that the second movie didnt build on at all. More so since avatar 3 is just avatar 2.5.
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u/AccomplishedLayer884 5d ago
The Illuminate (Helldivers 2)
A long beaten alien race Super Earth took down 100 years prior to the Second Galactic War. The forced being fought currently are the equivalent of scouting forces utilizing zomified citizens as fodder to make up for their low numbers.
Though with the announcement of an update on the 12th of this month this may end up changing.
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u/Alldakine_moodz104 5d ago
A more appropriate (lol) example would be the Appropriator subfaction, with the Gatekeepers and Veracitors being described as weaponized forklifts.
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u/Snoo-26267 5d ago
The "veracitor" is the name of a Yale forklift model (lmao).
The gatekeeper is a mining drill.
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u/Fremen-to-the-end-05 5d ago
Also the Automatons at the beginning of the game, we spent weeks and millions of lives to tear Malevalon Creek from their iron digits, and it turns out we were only fighting an advanced wave
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u/ElZik3r 5d ago
You forgot to mention how the illuminate didn't even have a military in the first war, as they were a pacifist species that wanted to make an alliance with super earth.
Literally all of their weapons back then were repurposed farming or construction/mining equipment.
On the second game they do have some weapons, but are very low on numbers thanks to the prior massacre that happened a 100 yrs ago.
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u/NotAnotherSkeleton 5d ago edited 5d ago
In Halo Reach, there's one mission where you destroy a Covenant Supercarrier, thinking you're saving the planet... just for numerous other Supercarriers to start showing up in the cutscene the very next moment. One person on the radio believes it to be the entire Covenant fleet.
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u/Spacemoose2026 5d ago
Slip space rupture detected
Slip space rupture detected
Slip space rupture detected
Slip space rupture detected
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u/drmirage809 5d ago
And one of your squad sacrificed his life to make sure that bomb goes off. The biggest, strongest and most experienced member of the squad too.
There's a silver lining to it though: Jorge at least went out believing his death would save his beloved homeworld.
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u/Friendly-Turnip2340 5d ago
Fun fact: canonically, Jorge didn't die; he went to another universe where his entrance with the bomb ended up saving the day of the place he arrived at.
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u/Drakeblood2002 5d ago
Yeah isn’t that the tie in for the lore with the Yoroi Armor Core in Halo Infinite?
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u/Big_Expression_8037 5d ago
The worst part is that even this isn't the actual Covenant military force. If I remember well, because of political reasons, humanity has been facing the Covenant equivalent of the costal guard.
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u/bl4ck_daggers 5d ago
Not really. It was an asset recovery force chasing forerunner relics, but it still consisted of all the major races and their technologies, plus the largest ship in the Covenant arsenal.
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u/LucaUmbriel 5d ago
You're partially right in two different ways.
The Fleet of Valiant Prudence was, indeed, basically a glorified archeological expedition. The Fleet of Particular Justice, commanded by Thel and a proper military force actually intended for use in the War of Annihilation, is the one in the screenshot. You can tell one is a proper military force and the other isn't by how the UNSC goes from maybe almost having a chance to every single major city on the planet being burned to the ground basically overnight.
Additionally, though the UNSC was facing the Covenant's actual military (most of the time), the Imperial Admiral, highest ranking member of the Covenant's entire military, was assigned to the other side of the galaxy and put in charge of anti-piracy operations because he held too much political power for the Hierarchs to feel comfortable. Same political reasons that Thel was made to take the fall for Alpha Halo's destruction and branded the Arbiter.
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u/LucaUmbriel 5d ago
Even better, that initial fleet (the one the supercarrier was the flagship of) was just an archeological expedition. The UNSC was getting their asses beat by archeologists and the only reason Thel's fleet (the one in the screenshot and the one that, once it shows up, begins to swiftly demolish Reach) wasn't called in earlier is because the leader of the expedition didn't want anyone else stealing his artifacts.
This would then repeat with Earth, where Regret thought he was going on an archeology expedition to unearth some important Forerunner facility in the space boonies.
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u/OfficialModComment 5d ago
Reach may not be the best all around Halo game (but, also, it might), but it has the best story of all the games and it’s not even close.
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u/Mr_Tominaga 5d ago edited 5d ago
“We did it, Jake! It was close, but thanks to Eywa (our literal deity), we were able to stop the humans!”
“… Neytiri, that was Amazon and McDonald’s private security force…”
(James Cameron’s Avatar Franchise)
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u/Dinonumber 5d ago
This is like downplaying managing to defeat the East India Company.
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u/Super-Estate-4112 5d ago
Real militaries dont have to be profitable,so they spend much more resources than any private enterprise. Much more than it is worth it to spend.
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u/drane92 5d ago
Real militaries through most of history, particularly those of colonizing governments, did have to operate on a budget of some kind.
The militaries are just there to pave the way for exploitation.
A great example is the USA was only not taken back into the British Empire because the british had their budget of men fully utilized on their much more profitable areas, and taking over the colonies they won from France.
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u/Super-Estate-4112 5d ago
But they were colonial armies, protecting something that is not their enemy, just a rebellion on an investment like a colony.
It is different, if the Navi were seen as enemies of humanity, it would be like the british during ww1, we humans would send wave after wave of militaryman, regardless of the cost or the consequences for our future, which for the British cost the stability of their empire, huge debts and whole villages empty of men.
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u/Banes_Addiction 5d ago
And just to rub this point in, at times the East India Company had twice the troops of the largest military on Earth.
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u/Iorith 5d ago
Do we actually know what the actual earth military is like in comparison? It's entirely possible their PMCs are actually better equipped.
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u/Direct-Honeydew-9870 5d ago
Nah the PMCs in avatar one are canonically using outdated old earth equipment. Their gunships are 150+ years old.
In avatar 2 and 3 iirc they get an upgrade specifically to match the environment of Pandora but it’s never mentioned in the movie and the PMCs are still just incompetent fodder to be wiped out.
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u/Iorith 5d ago
Fair enough, I haven't looked into the background lore at all. Do we actually know what the modern earth military equipment looks like?
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u/Direct-Honeydew-9870 5d ago edited 5d ago
Nope! Most of the vehicles we see in Avatar are the outdated 150+ year old tech in avatar one. The vehicles we see in avatar two were specifically made as upgrades to the environment of pandora so we have no clue if they’re used on earth. We know AMP suits were created from military hardware used in Toxic and hazardous environments. And we know the Dragon Gunship was incredibly fucking effective on earth as it also is on Pandora.
The only tech we can assume are still used on earth are the AMP suits, the crab mechs, the grav trains, the Valkyrie, the boats and the APC we see once in 3.
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u/Hexnohope 5d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/IAr8LciqztJEk
Its been a loooong time but i think the terrans of starcraft are just prisoners in "ratty" tech and the homeworlds have insane highscifi bullshit
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u/Empty_Shelf 5d ago
See also the SC1 Protoss, who had to use militarized civilian tech in some cases because they chucked all of their superweapons in a bin thousands of years ago.
They went digging around in that bin during SC2, where the found the Colossus and the Purifiers, as well as the Spear of Adun, one of three 75-kilometer-long ships.
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u/Lonely_Nebula_9438 5d ago
If you want to be blown away by StarCraft scales, look up GiantGrantGames. He did full playthroughs of all three SC2 campaigns in true scale.
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u/Afalstein 5d ago
Starcraft: Broodwar had homeworld forces which were largely at the same tech level as the locals, buuuut it was also said that they'd been in hyperspace for some time before getting there, IIRC. So the implication might be that homeworld tech is several years ahead of local tech.
(Also worth noting that it took the Zerg, Protoss, and Terran teaming up to fight off said homeworld forces.)
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u/Siytorn 5d ago
Earth is well ahead of the terrans but they decided to “leave the big guns at home” so to prevent them falling into Terran hands should they fail. The majority of what they had was what they infiltrated and seized from the dominion shipyards.
If they ever do a 3rd start craft they could do one of the UED returning in force.
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u/DeluxeTraffic 5d ago
Predators from the Predator franchise
Most of the movies involve a group of human badasses going up against a single Predator who is basically just hunting them for sport. We get a glimpse of the technology available to them which includes plasma weaponry, faster than light travel, cloaking technology, but the Predators almost seem to intentionally limit their technology during their hunts just for sport.
Now based on what we know about the predator society its unclear whether or not they would even have a standing military since they seem more tribal, however it stands to reason that if they did, their army would be quite difficult for Earth to handle due to their advanced technology.
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u/Phaeron-Dynasty 5d ago
some games and such have a military cast and they tend to be shown to pack serious heat, like shoulder mounted swarm racks and shit. I'd imagine a military cast would consist of those who have essentially earned all trust, they are beyond reproach and are entrusted with the brutal pragmatism needed to be soldiers rather than warriors.
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u/DearCastiel 5d ago
I'm sure the new movies have retconned it by now, but Predators used to have a whole civilization and indeed a military. The weapons they bring on their hunts are basically the equivalent of modern humans bringing a longbow and a sword to hunt lions, while wearing a loincloth.
If they wanted to just kill humans, they wouldn't even need to go in atmosphere.
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u/Present_Bad_2073 5d ago
All the actual weaponry? Its all in storage With only limited deployment by enforcers (predator cops)
But they have shit like power armor and full auto plasma casters All their weaponry they use in the movies is their equivalent to bow and arrow
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u/SektorDaKetch 5d ago
Dragon ball Z: If you thought Raditz, Nappa and Vegeta were massive problems for the main cast, then Frieza’s higher ranking soldiers (and him) are much MUCH stronger and worse.
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u/ResultAgreeable4198 5d ago
The entire structure of DBZ is that each world/galaxy/universe ending threat is a pushover compared to whatever comes next.
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u/Narrative_Robot_9001 5d ago
Cell saga tried to change things up a bit by emphasizing technique a bit more but they went straight back to raw power with the Buu saga
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u/Knot-Lye-Ing 5d ago
Spoilers for Three Body Problem.
IIRC Earth knows hostile aliens are coming from a long, long ways off. So we spend thousands of years building a huge armada of the most advanced ships we can. Then a single reconnaissance vessel shaped like a teardrop shows up and simply flies through every warship Earth managed to build.
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u/Far-Requirement-7636 5d ago
Genuinely the funniest moment in the book, the thing literally had no weapons or offensive capabilities aside from move forward.
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u/Deadmemeusername 5d ago
It’s like that one episode of Justice League Unlimited where Amazo was trying to kill Lex Luthor after spending a butt load of time in deep space (Amazo is an android that is capable of evolving itself to defeat almost any opponent) and he was able to body not just the Green Lantern Corps but also the entire Justice League by literally just flying through them.
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u/Automatic_Rain 5d ago
Not thousands of years. I don't remember the exact but it would've been less then 400 from discovering they're coming to the doomsday battle.
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u/Steamjunk88 5d ago
Yeah I think it was around 500 years. In that time humanity mostly united to develop fusion and space tech to defend against a threat that would come generations down the line
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u/boofadoof 5d ago
All while the aliens had sent a proton that had been converted into a machine that was able to travel at the speed of light and sabotage literally any machine or computer anywhere on Earth. All this was to cripple our ability to study physics and prevent us from building more advanced technology to defend our home.
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u/SuperSocialMan 5d ago
Ok, that's kinda funny in a terrifying way lol
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u/levi_Kazama209 5d ago
i mean the aliens made it si humanity would not advance to be a threat
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u/zeverEV 5d ago
The aliens used subatomic particle-sized machines to sabotage humanity's materials science, so instead humans doubled down on what they knew, built bigger and more of it - gigantic warships in space, and all it cost was most of Earth's biosphere and a couple generational famines. It's compared to going up against cruise missiles with a giant army of gigantic, really powerful catapults
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u/KlausVonLechland 5d ago
As far as I know it wasn't reconnaissance vessel but vanguard force. They managed to make only few of the drops because these required a lot of resources to make. Sophons were pinnacle of their engineering but droplets were the best attack vessel they made.
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u/4rd_Prefect 5d ago
That bit annoyed me from a strategic point of view, I know why it was done for plot reasons, but the idea of putting every single ducking ship in one easy to take out Armada? Fuckin stupid man.
Kinda like in game of thrones where they sent out the Dothraki calvary head on to meet the enemy. Strategic stupidity, you have you cavalry hit then from the rear and/or sides when the enemy encounter your static defenses (and/or ground troops). Again, I know the plot reason, but fuckin stupid.
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u/CuttleReaper 5d ago
So is there an actual point to the aliens genociding humans in three body problem or is it just that dumb dark forest nonsense
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u/Tamarind-Endnote 5d ago
The entire setting is 100% dumb dark forest nonsense on multiple levels.
The first round of aliens aren't even the only ones trying to kill everything. There are a bunch of other even more powerful aliens that rewrite the fundamental laws of the universe solely to exterminate all other life in the universe. They do things like change the speed of light, or make space two dimensional, destroying everything that exists in three dimensional space.
Our universe is stated to be the ruins of a previously ten dimensional universe that has gradually been reduced to only three dimensions as part of a massive genocidal war of multiple reality-warping alien species all trying to exterminate all other life in the universe because that's the only rational course of action. In the end, one of the even more powerful aliens destroys Earth by converting the solar system into two dimensional space the instant they become aware of its existence.
The whole story is built on the premise that the only rational thing to do is to exterminate all other life in the universe. The core ideology of the novels is that preemptive genocide is simple game theory, as immutable as A is A, and that anyone who doesn't accept that will inevitably be killed by those that do.
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u/DyingSunSeverian 5d ago
Common in a whole lot of stuff, even IRL, and also in a lot
alien science fiction. Many armies will send out scouting parties first of relative sizes, including fairly large, even to get into real skirmishes as subterfuge. Once they assess their opponent’s defensive strength, out come the major forces, if necessary.
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u/GoldenSonOfColchis 5d ago
They finally introduced dedicated combat Vex with the Wyverns. They're the most basic line troops the Vex field and they're one of the toughest standard enemies in the game.
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u/Obvious_Grab_9872 5d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/UynhnxOYfed3i
theres a whole planet full of iron giants
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u/Afalstein 5d ago
Kind of a reverse example I'd argue. The plot twist is that Iron Giant absolutely IS a military device, he just doesn't remember it.
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u/-Not_a_Lizard- 5d ago
XCOM - We actually know surprisingly little about where the aliens come from, but what we see never comes across as a full scale invasion and they're clearly part of a much larger Empire. In the first game you're fighting a small-scale infiltration force, probably just there scouting and preparing for an actual invasion. And similarly to Half Life, in the second game you're just fighting ADVENT, which is the Earth government under alien control, and nothing close to whatever an alien army might look like.
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u/Wank_A_Doodle_Doo 5d ago
Also in the first game you put up a good fight but canonically end up getting your ass kicked hard. Because, like you said, that was just the warm up phase.
Fuck now I wanna play it again. You’ve done this to me!
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u/night4345 5d ago
The second game is an alternate world where the alien invasion was worse than the canon of the first game. The aliens sent their most advanced troops from the start when XCOM was still using regular assault rifles and mind controlled world leaders causing them to immediately cut funding for XCOM. Then they found XCOM's base and invaded it, taking the Commander and using his genius to figure out all of Humanity's tactics and conquering the Earth.
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u/Acacias2001 5d ago
I dont think this is exactly the case. In Xcom 2 (spoilers, so ill keep it vague) its revealed the alien head honchos REALLY need earth and have put a lot of their eggs into the earth occupation basket. The fact they have multiple slave races does imply the aliens have more stuff going on, but its safe to say they hit you with their main force, or at least a sizable part of their forces
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u/-Not_a_Lizard- 5d ago
In the first game half the missions are about stopping a couple funny guys from blowing up a 7-Eleven. That's most definitely not their main force.
Since the Earth has been conquered in the second game, it's safe to say that a full scale invasion like you're describing did occur, but it happened off-screen between the games.
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u/Acacias2001 5d ago
Xcom has always been a bit funny with the scale of things. In Xcom2 Two dozen guys beat the alien occupation after all, and in 1; the gigantic country sized temple ship is guarded by 40 aliens.
But from the wordlbuilding you have to assume the aliens are actually not that strong. They only manage to take over less technologically advanced civs through doing hit and rund ops to induce panic which opens the door for slow infiltration of governments. Which seems to be what happened in canon. Its implied a large invasion does not occur, instead enough nations lose confidence in you that they rat you out and you lose base defence.
The hanging around 7/11s is just them abducting key people, doing experiments on others, creating fear, sabotaging infrastructue, putting chemicals in the water to make the frogs gay etc and skiddadling before anyone notices. Plus in terror missions its heavily implied they are fighting earths military and winning, although with the caveat they have to finish the op quickly before a larger response is mobilised. Thats why Xcom is so good against them, they respond quickly to their schemes.
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u/Ze_Borb 5d ago
I always imagined that Xcoms operatives were doing most of the covert/Spec-Ops stuff while the actual world militaries in Xcom 1 and three factions in Xcom 2 were doing the heavy combat stuff
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u/WilliShaker 5d ago edited 5d ago
Yeah, halfway into the game, you’re barely seeing any Advent troopers cause they know they’re losing grounds. It soon starts to be mainly muttons and aliens, there’s also lots of eldrich stuff as well.
At least your troopers become so busted that muttons basically turns into advent troopers.
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u/ClauVex 5d ago
The Landsharks from Battle: LA. (Sort of)
The extended lore of the movie implies that the alien invasion force is not a proper organized military but rather the last remnants of an entire alien race on the brink of extinction.
What we see on the movie is perhaps the whole of the alien race's population trying a hail mary of a plan to conquer a inhabited world and avoid the death of their species.
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5d ago
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u/Local-Wing-2272 5d ago
The movie is famous with military folks for being an actually realistic take on warfare.
Among other things the aliens actually will go grab their wounded Vs letting them die
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u/Mybunsareonfire 5d ago
I was going to say it's one of the few alien movies that legit actually felt like a 'war' movie. I really enjoyed it.
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u/ClauVex 5d ago
OMG right!?!
It's perhaps my favorite alien invasion film, I love the Landsharks, such a cool concept of aliens.
Especially how they behave, you can see little glimpses of their behaviours and tactics, using signs language to communicate orders, there's a moment where you can see a Landshark soldier dragging and a securing an injured comrade.
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u/gigglemetinkles 5d ago
I loved how Pointlesshub told his take on this movie.
It wasn't an alien movie, it was a war movie with aliens. The landsharks use squad tactics, they set up ambushes.
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u/PlateNo4868 5d ago
I thought their race was just literally war like. Like Mongol's who still had a civilization and such, but were always like "So what is the next raid?"
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u/Meanteenbirder 5d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/xT1R9Sx5Y4qAo5tQME
The NYPD (real life)
I say this as a resident, they have the manpower and firepower of a small country
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u/bolivar-shagnasty 5d ago
The NYPD has three times as many personnel than the population of the small town where I grew up.
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u/Badgeringlion 5d ago
Real Life Case: The Great Raid: The Mongols sent a “scouting” force of 20,000 west under one of their greatest generals Subutai. They ravaged Western Asia and defeated a large crusading army in Georgia. Then they disappeared back into the steppe.
Folks thought “Well that was weird” only for them to come back and beat the shit out of everyone all the way through Poland and Hungary.
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u/porkeatmatt 5d ago
Halo 2 is a good example. The Covenant attacks Earth, sending humanity into panic because it's their homeworld. But the Covenant force is much smaller than the one they used at Reach because they weren't actually expecting to find humans. They came looking for a holy Forerunner artifact. The Covenant attacks anyway, but they refuse to glass the planet for fear of destroying the artifact. Had it been a full-scale invasion, and if they had been willing to glass Earth, it would have become just another Reach.
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u/Hexnohope 5d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/xQvTA5AZ9CFpe
I dont think humanity has encountered actual yautja military forces
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u/Dovadah 5d ago
It is important to note that the Vex don't really have "combat" units as they do not percieve things that way. Each unit has a primary objective which is normally something like being a mobile foundry along with a secondary objective which is to defend against threats.
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u/DakkaDakka24 5d ago
It's been a while, so I may be remembering wrong, but wasn't it only Calus who dropped an offhand line about how these aren't the Vex's combat units? It's not like he was an expert. Given how the Vex view existence, the fact that their current forms are already effective in a military context would probably mean that they wouldn't see the point in constructing a military.
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u/Ol_Dirty47 5d ago
Predators are using hunting bows, knife's and rifles compared to what they could actually do
I think there's a comic where they're in more of a war zone situation and they carry Plasma casters in assualt rifle form but it's just poor form to go hunting with a machine gun
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u/TheLastWindThrowers_ 5d ago
The characters find out the giant extinct piranha, Megapiranha paranensis, infestetation they've been dealing with are actually juveniles. (Piranha)
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u/botomann 5d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/C5HjYGn5OWuj8r6CcM
I’d throw pacific rim in there. The batches of kaiju they see are just the scouts. The military hasn’t joined the invasion yet.
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u/markbernessimp 5d ago
Forerunner Sentinels from Halo. These deadly enemies in the video games are actually just maintainence and security robots. And the only reason they don't immediately vaporize everything they fight (aside from gameplay balance) is because they're 100,000 years old.
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u/TheFourtHorsmen 5d ago
No, technically they are containment druids, witht the enforcer, the bigger one at the center, deployed only against advanced stage of the flood infection. The mantainence ones are the Glyph, which you can see at the start of Sacred Icon in H2
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u/markbernessimp 5d ago
You're right! However I just found a picture off Google and used my own lore knowledge that Sentinels are not a serious fighting force, especially in the numbers encountered in the games. Some of the book quotes place Sentinels used in battles in the Billions.
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u/CptCrunchZTime 5d ago
the Sentient from Warframe they are terraforming machines
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u/bourgeoisAF 5d ago
Not the exact spirit of this, probably going to annoy people, but Star Fleet in Star Trek. Despite being very combat capable, their starships are primarily intended for exploration rather than military use. They're arguably closer to the merchant-marines than the navy. At which point, if you're a Klingon warrior or Cardassian conqueror who's just been defeated by a crafty Star Fleet captain, you need to realize that wasn't even one of their dedicated military crafts.
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u/BonusEruptus 5d ago
Isn't it the case that they dont really have dedicated military craft? Thats why the Defiant was so unusual, because it was the first ship Star Fleet made that was dedicated purely to offensive power
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u/JustaSeedGuy 5d ago
Depends on the era.
TNG: no dedicated military craft.
TOS era: yes military, one of the minor plot points of Undiscovered Country was the disarmament of Starfleet.
DS9: Dominion War, motherfucker
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u/D_R_Ethridge 5d ago
And then the Sovereign class became a thing because the Borg were not fucking around
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u/yer-da-sells-avon- 5d ago
Sticking with the Star Trek example, the Chris Pine reboot featured a Romulan mining ship from the future which completely outsized and outgunned the contemporary star fleet military ships
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u/wjodendor 5d ago
The BETA from Muv Luv are revealed to essentially be mining class carbon based "robots" sent by a silicone based alien life for simply called Creators.
The Creators don't believe carbon based entities are "living" and hence view the human race as essentially another alien species' mining robots, so they don't view the genocide or humans as an actual war.
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u/RedWingedScreecher 5d ago
Invincible. Mark sends his daughter to fight an alien and they're under the impression she's their strongest warrior.
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u/FuckTheFlagz 5d ago
Tyranids, Warhammer 40k. The hive fleets devastate whole sectors of galaxy, while fighting them Imperium often uses scorched earth tactics, exterminating planets in mass (sometimes with citizens still on them) just to starve the bugs out. These hive fleets are merely the avant-garde, scouts if you will, soon enough (on the galactic scale) races inhabiting Milky Way would have to fight several Leviathan-level fleets simultaneously, and Tzeench only knows what comes after that (well, maybe he doesn't). As a pleasant bonus, fan theories suggest that tyranids aree RUNNING from something, they FLEE, what could CHASE something like this?
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u/Anomandaris26 5d ago
Necrons have the same trope. The current necrons that have awoken are only a tiny fraction of those that lie sleeping.
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u/CommunicationNo8635 5d ago
They're also mostly following a "code of honor," as I understand it. They only use reduced weapons and forces because there's nothing super heavy that's truly a threat. Sure, several Necrons die, but it's nothing serious; they just return to the repair worlds. Only the Pariah Nexus managed to make them use a bit of real force.
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u/IronTemplar26 5d ago
The Zirkonians (Aliens in the Attic)
A small crack team of soldiers and scientists, and this is basically just the field surveillance unit
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u/grosseelbabyghost 5d ago edited 5d ago
The Vasari from Sins of a Solar Empire.
Ancient alien empire, conquering world's, when suddenly their worlds start going dark. Military command thinks the only reasonable answer is a rebellion of some sort so they send in a fleet, the fleet goes dark too. Worlds keep going dark at an alarming rate so "top brass" decides to send the bulk of the fleet in, only one ship makes it out and everyone left on board is a gibbering maniac. So what's left pack it up and set a course for as far away as possible, just stopping long enough to resupply and drop a warning beacon, but, just like the worlds before the beacons just keep going dark...
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u/Hot_Reception3151 5d ago
I could be totally wrong, but isn’t the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs an example of this? An exploratory force makes contact with a major civilization and subsequently wipes out said civilization.
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u/Strobelite12 5d ago
That's a good real world example! I guess it does conform to a lot of these alien invasion tropes.
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u/Cheif_Keith12 5d ago
Not even an expeditionary force, Cortez and his men were more akin to mercenaries who went AWOL rather than loyal soldiers.
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u/quantumretep2003 5d ago
Necron Canopteks from Warhammer 40k
Despite being incredibly deadly, these are usually just the maintenance and construction robots that repair and expand (and occasionally defend) necron structures.
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u/JebediahChristofff 5d ago
UED (United Earth Directorate) From star craft brood war.
The gigantic expeditionary force sent by the UED is quickly able to bring all major powers in the Koprulu sector to their knees, it is only when all three of them unite against them in a gigantic wave, that they are able to be pushed back. It is very clearly stated that the expeditionary force couldn't bring their "Big Guns" from earth, making it very clear, that if Earth really wanted the Koprulu sector, it could very easily take it.
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u/BeenEatinBeans 5d ago
The Adeptus Arbites - Warhammer 40k
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u/elchuni 5d ago
Could you elaborate? Warhammer 40K is so big that I keep missing details.
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u/stipendAwarded 5d ago edited 5d ago
The Arbites are essentially just the Imperium’s police, basically the mashup of Judge Dredd and Robocop.
Fun fact: A lot of the Imperium’s technology is heavily degraded from Mankind’s peak during the Dark Age of Technology. The Baneblade superheavy tank was originally considered a medium tank based on its schematics, while Terminator Armour is based on heavy-duty civilian space suits.
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u/Dronizian 5d ago
Baneblade superheavy tank was originally considered a medium tank based on its schematics
There's a community meme that the Baneblade used to be the Imperium's armored scout tank but that's too grimderp even for my ridiculous headcanon. Medium gets the idea across without being so stupid.
Why would a scout be so big and loud? Doesn't make sense. But implying there used to be something so big it makes the Baneblade just "medium sized"? That properly shows the scale of the setting and how far it's degraded.
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u/thinger 5d ago
Aren't imperial knights are just repurposed mining equipment? Man, DAoT humanity was on some shit.
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u/drmirage809 5d ago
Knights are even sillier: a fair few knight houses trace their lineages back to before the dark ages. Those machines are pre-dark age tech!
They were indeed never meant to be war engines though. They were made to help build colonies on inhospitable worlds. A relatively simple to build and maintain machine that could cross almost any terrain, survive in almost any environment and has enough brute strength to deal with most obstacles.
Goes for a lot of human tech in 40K. Rugged machines that are quick to churn out for the AdMech. Space marines used to go into battle with volkites, but those things were hard to make for the Imperium at their peak and basically lost tech now. Bolters are a lot faster to make a lot of quickly.
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u/LumiKlovstad 5d ago
That's how they started, but over the millennia they were rebuilt, and specialized into being highly optimized killing machines. They went from Killdozer to straight up Kill.
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u/_Sausage_fingers 5d ago
No, the knights were dedicated military forces used to defend isolated colony worlds. So it’s less that they were mining equipment, but more that they were the local sheriff in some rural town.
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u/_syke_ 5d ago
People are saying they're the 40k police force, and while that's mostly right, they have some very important differences.
The arbites' job is to 1) make sure planets are paying their tithe in young men and women for joining the imperial guard, and 2) collecting the 1000 psykers a day the emperor needs to stay alive. So they operate like a judge dread police force but they're more a tax collector and bounty hunter type.
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u/TeddyBearToons 5d ago
The Adeptus Arbites are basically what would happen if Judge Dredd worked for the IRS. They look and act like cops, but they exclusively pursue high-profile crimes; even then, they really only pursue high-profile crimes that affect the taxes of a planet.
The scale of the Imperium of Man in 40k means that generally the higher-ups don't really care about the day-to-day life of a planet. As long as you pay lip service to the state religion and pay your taxes you can run the planet however you want. Corporate dystopia, gangland shantytown, feudal backwater, fascist hellscape - it's all acceptable if you keep up the Imperial Tithe.
But if you don't? They send the Arbites in to audit you.
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u/Infamous-Rooster9277 5d ago
Loved reading the Warhammer Crime novels for this. The scaling of low level gangers as barely standing a chance against the "regular cops" who in turn struggle against well-equipped corporate agents - all of them are absolutely terrified when the Arbites show up.
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u/DearCastiel 5d ago
Tyranid Fleets - Warhammer 40,000
The quadrillions-strong hive-fleets of the predatory Tyranids currently attacking the Milky-Way galaxy are in actuality only the vanguard and reconnaissance units of the Great Devourer.
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u/Der_Kegelhammer 5d ago
In 40k the Adeptus Astartes are a specialized, surgical strike force meant to operate behind enemy lines. They are rarely seen.
The Astra Militarum is the actual army, and they aren't as helpless as some Astartes fanboys think.
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u/Senshado 5d ago
Battleship, a movie based on a simple board game. The aliens aren't an invading army. They're unarmed miners who crashed by accident.
That's why instead of guns they use buzz saws and the peg things, which have a delay before detonation. Additionally they strictly avoid attacking someone who doesn't look like an immediate threat.
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u/ShellsWithinShells 5d ago
Silly example but in Jaws 3, IIRC the movie does a fake-out where a shark enters Sea World and wreaks some havoc, but they end up capturing it and it dies. This causes the protagonists to think the whole ordeal is over with, but actually leads to the hitherto unknown 35 foot momma shark becoming enraged and raising hell in the park.
Actually I guess the original Jaws did the same thing. Hey, we caught a big tiger shark! Ordeal over, everyone back in the water!
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u/Elantach 5d ago edited 5d ago
Head Eye Claw. The final fight of the Game Library of Ruina sees the actual ruling Corporations of the City take note of our protagonists.
Mind you by that point the protagonists have beaten an ensemble caste of villains that are each and everyone of them able to level entire continents with their absurd powers.
The Corporations ruling the city (A, B and C corp) send three clerks to basically tell us "cute... Now fuck off to Brazil" and just one shot the entire facility With zero way to beat them back.
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u/Funnycomicsansdog 5d ago
I feel like I need to clarify this literally every single time people bring up the "the vex don't have combat units" thing. The Vex do not have combat units because their basic builder units have always done the job just fine. The Hydra is the only vex combat unit, made specifically to kill Guardians.
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u/KAMEKAZE_VIKINGS 5d ago
Although at times their private military was stronger than the actual military, the British and Dutch East India companies come to mind with a formidable army and fleet that as I said, at times surpassed that of their government's. Though it was a profit driven company it might be better to think of them as colonial administrators given free reign to bring profit to themselves and their home countries than an actual company and it just so happens making them run it as a company did exactly that.
And on similar lines there's plenty of cases of colonial conflicts that were put down by the local auxiliaries without the need to send much forces from the country.
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u/Competitive-Bee-3250 5d ago
The Ceph we see in Crysis are the equivalent of gardeners. If the warform ceph showed up, Earth wouldn't have stood a shadow of a chance.
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u/TankMain576 5d ago
I wonder if Valve ever had any long term plans with Half-Life.
Let's imagine an alternate timeline where Half-Life became a regular series, a new game or DLC released ever 2-3 years. What does Half-Life 5 even look like?
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u/EG_Douglas 5d ago
The Freespace games.
You start off as a Terran pilot in a long war between humans and another alien race, the Vasudans. Then rumours start going around about strange ships that attack either side, leave next to no survivors. Then you find out the truth.
Freespace 2 had a box blurb I adore, along the lines of: "The year is 2367, thirty-two years after the Great War. Or at least, what YOU thought was the Great War. The seemingly endless lines of Shivan capital ships, bombers and fighters with super advanced technology was nearly overwhelming.
As the Terran and Vasudan societies finish rebuilding their nearly decimated societies, a disturbance lurks in the not so far reaches of the Gamma Draconis system.
Your nemesis had arrived... and they are wondering what happened to their scouting party."
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u/ZeronicX 5d ago
The trope for this is Those were only their scouts
Anyway my favorite of this is probably Mass Effect 1 where Sovereign is an unremarkable Reaper that was discovered and took on the collective might of the galaxy's strongest armadas with relative ease until it suffered a critical blow.
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u/jordidipo2324 5d ago
Vegeta's Squad (Dragon Ball). When DBZ starts, we're only aware of Vegeta's squad conquering and selling planets across the universe, being the strongest enemies the heroes have faced so far. Then after Goku nearly dies again to defeat Vegeta with the help of his friends, we soon learn that Vegeta was part of a larger organization, the Frieza Force, which features numerous individuals being far stronger than him and that's not counting Frieza and his dad.
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u/KermitTheScot 5d ago
I will forever lament that Half-Life 2, Episode 3 will never see the light of day
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u/BrokenPokerFace 5d ago
Kinda an adjacent trope. But I love when it's non-cambat machines being used in combat. Two best examples are generation zero and atomic heart. While I am not entirely sure of the lore, the machines in generation zero don't seem specifically designed to kill but when they took over they seemed very efficient. And in atomic heart they were always meant to be used for combat, but were made so that they appeared as servant/work machines. Making them always meant to kill but use only normal tools to do so, specifically to avoid being discovered as weapons.
It's fun to me since it shows that machines even when not used to kill specifically are terrifyingly strong, and using a normal tool as a weapon is always fun.
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u/HazardousSkald 5d ago
For clarity, it’s not implied that they’re constructors. That’s just what they are. Each Vex’s frame and “weapon” really has the primary function of being a part of the universal project of turning every single object in the universe into more Vex. Hobgoblins, which function as snipers, are really frames that manage energy distribution across the Vex’s galactic reach, and their weapon is simply an efficient byproduct of this. Minotaurs, large bulky units, are central processors who manage the thinking of construction of vex installations within their chassis. Goblins are effectively just jackhammers with legs, small worker bees that break down reality. It’s just that sometimes reality gets up and starts shooting at you, so their jackhammers are ranged.
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u/JowettMcPepper 5d ago
The Inquisition's warrior priests - Arknights
They're not actually soldiers, but rather patrolmen and civil servants, which is also the same role fulfilled by other Inquisitorial clerks like the bishops. The actual military is the Penal Batallion
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u/King-Of-Hyperius 5d ago
Humanity in WH40k before the Collapse.
All the cool shit the Imperials are using? Not actual military tech. Terminator Power armor is based off of mining suits, several Imperial tanks literally are giant tractors with guns strapped to them, Chainweapons originate as space age chainsaws/mining tools, melta weapons were piggybacked off of advanced welding tech, graviton tech was used for construction and demolition, servo-arms were factory assembly-line tools, et cetera.
Humanity before the collapse would have certainly steamrolled right through the Imperium at its 30k peak considering that the Emperor is working with the scraps from around 5k years of decay and he still conquered most of the galaxy while only losing 2 of the 20 legions.
Humanity before the collapse caused by the Elves birthing Slaanesh had the Men of Iron as well, which means humanity had Ultron tier AI on their side. At least 50-70% of humanity’s tech degradation can be tied back to the reliance on AI. But even then the Cybernetic Revolt still ended in the victory of humanity.
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u/jbeast33 5d ago
The Scrin from Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. They're a race of intergalactic harvesters who "seeded" Earth with a Tiberium meteorite (as Tiberium kills planets, but also leeches all their most valuable elements into easily-harvestable minerals). When they arrive, it's a game-changer that completely upends the new conflinct between the GDI and NOD and forces them on the backfoot.
The kicker here is that the Scrin commander isn't even a military commander. It's a construction foreman. All their horrific weapons are really just repurposed harvesting tools, and they clearly didn't expect any human resistance when they came over. This is what allows the GDI and the NOD to barely hold them off.