Unknown Speaker: Just give me rough projections on Marines casualties.
1st Lt Darren Alpaugh: Approximately 1,000 to 2,500.
Unknown Speaker: Total?
1st Lt Darren Alpaugh: No sir. Per week.
1st Lt Darren Alpaugh: Approximately 1,000 to 2,500.
Unknown Speaker: Total?
1st Lt Darren Alpaugh: No sir. Per week.
The Cavalry has arrived! Unfortunately, they're all Red Shirts... and they all graduated from the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy. Uh-oh.
The Hero, who may or may not have any special training or powers, is to be escorted into a "hot zone" by a team of Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, Space Marines, a S.W.A.T. Team, or some other heavily-armed and, one would assume, well-trained unit. Invariably, mere minutes into the mission, they've all been ambushed and killed off by the platoon-load, leaving only the hero alive to finish the job.
Happens all the time in action shows; so often, in fact, that it makes one wonder how these guys ever passed muster (heck, even survived long enough) for assignment to an elite military or security force if they drop like mayflies in every tactical situation.
This often massive loss of life will rarely be noted by anyone or have any direct effect on the plot, unless the heroes need to emote over how senseless the situation is. These guys are spear carriers in the finest Joseph Campbell tradition.
Provides a convenient demonstration of just how scary the villain is and also explains why the villain gets away all the time (at least at the time).
Please note: this Trope is actually very inaccurate when you compare it to Real Life. If you were to watch every episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, count the number of casualties that the Enterprise had, and then compare that to an actual military, you'd see that Kirk's record as a leader in this regard is excellent, far better than any general in U.S. history. Even war heroes like George Washington and Dwight D. Eisenhower had proportionately more casualties among their troops.note It's simply that of the men who do die under Kirk's command, they're far more likely to be wearing a red shirt than a blue or gold one.note
This is sometimes justified by the idea that the doomed Red Shirts are actually quite competent, especially in other areas, but they've never had any formal training in how to fight beings that can kill them simply if you look at them funny. In other words, take The Worf Effect and apply it to an entire military.
As the singular Red Shirt is the "good" counterpart to Evil Minions, the Redshirt Army is the "good" counterpart to the endless hordes of Mooks (and thus where to go when looking for easily-killed bad guys). The Badass Army is the logical opposite to this; take note how often (as in the example above) Red Shirt Army is, in fact, a subversion of Badass Army via The Worf Effect. Another opposite are the Men of Sherwood, who aren't quite badass enough to qualify as a Badass Army, but who are at least competent enough at their jobs not to be wiped out on the spot.
See Gideon Ploy for when no such army is arriving. See also Vanilla Unit, which tend to make up playable Redshirt Armies.
Often precedes Monster Threat Expiration.
See Also: A-Team Firing, Cannon Fodder, Conservation of Ninjutsu, Curb-Stomp Battle, Lemming Cops.
Also: A Red Shirt that has, through luck, moxie, or through the endearment of the fanbase may become a Mauve Shirt...clothed in the most powerful of Plot Armor. The Mauve Shirt will often accompany the army as their leader or representative...and generally makes it out alive. That is, until the Plot Armor wears off.
Not to be confused with Giuseppe Garibaldi's Italian Redshirts, who were a real-life Badass Army. Or with the British Redcoats, the land component of one of the greatest military forces in history.
No Real Life Examples, Please!
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Anime & Manga
- Any friendly force in a Humongous Mecha series that isn't equipped with Humongous Mecha. (The AD Police in the Bubble Gum Crisis OVAs count here, despite the fact that they had mecha — the mecha they had were the mass-produced tin-can-death-trap variety.) If all the main characters have unique mecha, then any friendly force that does have mecha but only has one or two different models that qualify. For example, the allied armies in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann are simply cannon fodder.
- Most of the characters from Attack on Titan are in one. Military training is essentially designed to weed out the weaker, less skilled, and less determined of the bunch by being physically and psychologically grueling, but even the hardy recruits who manage to graduate can easily die in battle against the Titans. The manga has tons of characters, but after the front line troops in the Survey Corps suffer several high casualty events, the only survivors of the final engagement are the main characters and one random guy.
- This seems to apply no matter which side of the conflict you're on, as is also shown with both Marleyan soldiers and the Mid-East Alliance army.
- In Berserk any army that doesn't have a main or plot important character in it is dead meat. There's also what happened to a lot of the Hawk's Raiders whenever the Hawks went up against an Apostle. Or what happened to nearly everyone in the entire Band when the Eclipse went down. It's easy to believe the band of the Hawk consists of only Guts, Casca, Griffith, and the Raiders. Their actual numbers are somewhere around 5,000 men, but all focus is put on the former mentioned members.
- In Bleach, the shinigami are completely useless against ANY threat which comes to them and have to be bailed out by the main heroes. Only the Lieutenants and Captains manage to be useful and avoid this, even though they are subject to The Worf Effect at the same time. Lampshaded and acknowledged when the captains acknowledge there's maybe ten people in Soul Society who are up to fighting with Aizen, they know it, and they make up the bulk of the Gotei 13's fighting power. Also, Ichigo is apparently twice as strong as they are, which is why they suck compared to him.
- Ditto Paradigm City's Military Police forces in The Big O. The lone ones that don't give up by the finale and actually try to join the fight on Roger's side get vaporized in fairly short order. This actually becomes a plot point in Season 2. The commissioner is shown many times to be struggling with the fact that he and his men are almost completely useless against the giant robot-threats that keep popping up everywhere. Its also indicated that this inferiority complex was the reason he was so hostile toward Big O in Season 1.
- Lampshaded in the cover of chapter 144 of Blade of the Immortal manga which features a dartboard with the bullseye being taken up by a picture of the leader (100 points for hitting it) while the outermost ring is a picture of a faceless goon (10 points for hitting it).
- The AD Police of the Bubblegum Crisis universes. Slightly lampshaded in the non-canon Bubblegum Crisis: Grand Mal comic where an AD Police grunt stands in front of a wall memorial of fallen officers and retorts against a comment on how overarmed and overpowered the AD Police are.
- Cyberpunk: Edgerunners: Any armed organization in Night City only exists to get slaughtered in droves by the protagonists or similarly dangerous chrome junkies. The NCPD, Trauma Team, MaxTac, even Arasaka's and Militech's corporate armies are nothing but cannon fodder whenever they put in an appearance.
- Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: The lower ranked Slayers are easily disposable and they die frequently. The setting doesn’t even bother stating an exact count of how many active Demon Slayers exist within the Corps - only nine Hashira at most are accounted for when the roster is complete.
- Dragon Ball Z sees multiple cases of Redshirt armies ripped apart by horrifically powerful aliens and androids. By the time the Buu saga rolls around you'd think they'd have learned that when someone is spotted who flies and uses Ki Attacks its best to just sit back and wait for those other flying folks to take care of the job before sending waves upon waves of men to die.
- Fairy Tail: Whenever the military of Fiore tries to dispose of villains, they're often utterly curb stomped, or forced to retreat.
- Gate - Thus the JSDF Fought There: The Empires armies exist solely to be slaughtered in droves by the JSDF. The reason is that they are a medieval fantasy army armed with late Roman Empire weapons, supported by fantasy creatures, facing against a modern Japanese army with Cold War era equipment.
- Gantz: Any and all non-Gantz hunters will be utterly useless when it comes to fighting the aliens, as seen from the Osaka arc onwards. Many Gantz hunters and whole teams die in their fights, with the ship infiltration in the End of the World arc being an exemplary instance.
- GaoGaiGar: The Mic Sounders brigade exists mainly to be brutally destroyed several times. Funnily enough, the only one of them that is red is part of the main cast.
- Gundam:
- The Federation forces in the original Mobile Suit Gundam had the GMs, mass-produced mecha whose sole purpose was to die in droves against Char's Gelgoog, Zeong, or Dozle's Big Zam (which weren't mass produced), as well as the M61 Main Battle Tank for when they needed something that Zeon's own mooks could threaten.
- As the structural analogue of the Earth Federation military in Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, the various military branches of the United Earth Sphere Alliance occupy a similar role against the five titular Gundams. It doesn't help that they've spent the last sixty years in much more mundane and complacent roles, and more conventional forces — particularly aircraft, mechanized infantry, tanks, and warships — are as least as numerous as their mobile suit forces. The first of multiple coups sees the Alliance military disbanded and the Special Mobile Suit Troops, OZ's formal cover, replace them (who enjoy more success against the Gundams, after a lot of work)
- Both the Earth Alliance and ZAFT in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny were this way. Whether it was Strike Daggers and GINNs, or Windams and ZAKUs. Orb's Astrays and Murasames fare a little better, giving as good as they get against invading Federation or ZAFT forces, and even manage to take down a minor bad guy. But still tend to get wrecked against major characters.
- The whole of the Earth Sphere Federation forces in Gundam 00: A Wakening of the Trailblazer. In their defense, they were outnumbered 10,000-to-1. Nobody's going to do particularly well with those odds.
- The rebel group Katharon of Mobile Suit Gundam 00 looks like the AEUG to the A-Laws Titans, except that the AEUG had great mechas and pilots while the Katharon go into battle with mechas that where useless in the previous season that takes place four years ago. Their only purpose is to momentarily distract the A-Laws while Celestial Being does all the actual fighting. You have to wonder why they even bother if all they do is die. Briefly subverted when A-Laws brings out anti-beam smoke. Even the mighty 00 is hampered by its reliance on beam weapons and it falls to Katharon and their obsolete solid guns to pull CB out of a tight spot. Fortunately for them A-Laws relied heavily on beam weapons too.
- In the first season of Mobile Suit Gundam 00, anyone who ever pilots an AEU-MS are automatically members of the Redshirt Army. During the battle in Moralia, there were more than 200 Hellions and several brand-new Enacts. The survivors ran away when the Gundam Meisters had slain about 200 soldiers in minutes.
- The first part of Mobile Suit Gundam AGE introduces the Genoace, which, upon inspection, seems to have been made with very little regard to combat effectiveness. Its weapons are rather poor excuses for the title (a beam spray gun and a heat stick,), it's lightly armored, and to cap it all off, the Federation was still using it despite the fact that they had failed to claim a single victory with the thing over the first fifteen years of the Vagan war.
- Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans has a subversion with it's GM expy, the Shiden — while the suit fills most of the roles that the GM normally would have, although unlike the GM, the amount destroyed is rather small in comparisonnote . Playing this straight, however, are the Grazes and Reginlazes in the faction loyal to McGillis Fareed, which much like the ones used by the villains, go down rather easily.
- Heavy Object: Units attached to Objects serve as this, primarily existing to die in droves in order to support their Elite and inconvenience the protagonists. The 37th Maintenance Battalion is no exception aside from the protagonists and a handful of side characters like Myonri who lived long enough to get a second appearance.
- Both the unpowered human soldiers of the Hellsing organization and their Wild Geese mercenary replacements fall into this, being near-useless against the enemy vampires in close range (to their credit, the Wild Geese were well-aware of it and took pains to engage the vampires at long-range, but unfortunately were unable to keep it up). The ghouls fall into this category as well since they are little more than vampire-controlled, mindless zombies.
- In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, the group travels by boat while joined by members from the Speedwagon Foundation. Upon encountering a large freighter ship, it isn't long until all of the crew members are brutally slaughtered by Forever.
- They may not wear red, but the generic Combat Mages of Lyrical Nanoha have a tendency to get mowed down whenever they encounter the current villain's main forces. They're pretty good at keeping Mecha-Mooks at bay though, and they were able to contain the Wolkenritter until their Mysterious Protector appeared. In their defense, the main villains of the series are way out of their league. They're essentially cops, and you expect them to be able to take on an insane and insanely powerful mage (albeit with a bit of an Informed Ability), One-Man Army magic knights from an Artifact of Doom and a Mad Scientist and his super-powered cyborg minions and countless attack drones.
- Macross: The regular UN forces in Macross 7 and later Macross Frontier (who in both cases were mostly flying outdated Humongous Mecha and had limited, if any, combat experience; this is even a plot point in Frontier and is used to explain the existence of Private Military Contractors).
- The entire UEAF navy in Martian Successor Nadesico seem to exist purely for blowing up. They rarely do anything and in one episode when the Nadesico's mechs start firing on them accidentally, easily destroy ships which allegedly cost more than the titular ship.
- Mazinger Z: In the last Go Nagai manga arc, the Japanese army created the Mazinger army — a squad of mass-production, piloted Mazingers — to try and defeat Big Bad Dr. Hell once and for all. However, as Kouji was performing test flights with the Jet Scrander, Dr. Hell threw a massive attack involving several mobile fortresses and several dozens of Mechanical Beasts. Main character, Love Interest and Battle Couple Sayaka Yumi and the Mazinger army flew to meet the Hell's army. The entire army but one got annihilated, and you will never guess who was the single survivor. Sayaka. The Mazinger army reappeared in Mazinkaiser, and all of them were quickly destroyed and killed by the Mykene empire army. Only Tetsuya and Jun survived, and only Tetsuya put out a good, actual fight.
- All of the soldiers stationed in the castle at the beginning of Murder Princess are easily wiped out by a bunch of trolls and a Tyke-Bomb mechanical doll.
- MegaMan NT Warrior (2001): During the Life Virus arc, Lan and Mega Man partake in a task force filled with NetNavis controlled by specialists picked specifically to take down Wily's WWW organization. After everyone gets in a hit against the Life Virus, they celebrate... then get annihilated, leaving only Mega Man and Proto Man.
- In Naruto, despite the ANBU Black Ops supposedly being the strongest ninjas, with many of the best ninjas in the series being former members, they are usually killed off pretty quickly. Similarly, the Great Shinobi Alliance pretty much just exists to die in large numbers. After one day of fighting, a full half of the army was dead.
- The Magical Teachers and Students in Negima! Magister Negi Magi during the Mahora Fair arc were woefully unprepared for the fight... so Negi cons the entire student body into making a second Redshirt Army for this fight.
- And the Japanese Strategic Self-Defense Forces in Neon Genesis Evangelion (which are also prone to Five Rounds Rapid); in fact, all portrayals of the JSDF in anime. On the other hand, they do learn after a while and only use remote control missile barrages, and those are usually just distractions.
- ...or in kaiju movies (e.g. Godzilla) either, for that matter, where any reference to the necessary reality that there are people inside all the tanks and jets being uselessly thrown at the monsters (and by extension, the sanity of continuing to order such futile engagements) is the exception rather than the rule.
- Subverted in early episodes of Kotetsushin Jeeg, however. The JSDF display competent tactics in their battle against Himika's Phantom Gods, and although Jeeg spearheads their attacks, he can't do it alone.
- And in Bokurano the JSDF are essential in many of the fights between the Humongous Mecha.
- Gasaraki also subverts this with the JSDF having a unit of mechs with the protagonist piloting the same suit as his squad mates. Even though he is a little more skilled at it none of them are pushovers.
- One Piece: The Marines, despite antagonizing the protagonists, who are pirates, are full of people who legitimately want to make the world a safer place, Knight Templar Well-Intentioned Extremist members aside. However, they are mostly victims of The Worf Effect, and by the time of the Paramount War arc, anyone who isn't a member of the admiralty can get swept aside with ease.
- Rebuild World: Hunters in general end up like this, being Private Military Contractors cut down in droves by Kain's Mini-Mecha, or in the Urban Warfare in Mihazono, for instance. For Katsuya, who leads Boisterous Weakling young Drankam hunters, the loss of his forces like this is Played for Drama with his Survivor Guilt. While for several other named hunters like Kurosawa, Tatsukawa, Mercia, and Xellos, they put The Men First and lead their hunters well, keeping casualties to a minimum since they aren't burdened by being a Glory Seeker like Katsuya.
- Strike the Blood: The Island Guard. They haven't managed to kill or subdue a single monster on their own, but are almost always victims of a Curb-Stomp Battle. It's quite questionable why people want to become an Island Guard with the high casualty rates. Is the pay really that good?
- Super Atragon provides a rare, naval example: The massive US-led, UN fleet gets swept from the ocean in one shot.
- The Tower of Druaga has the Army of Uruk and some miscellaneous Climber parties perform a bit better than the rest of the examples of this page, but they're still not as good as the heroes. Season 2 introduces the Golden Knights, who are completely worthless against anyone with a modicum of fighting experience.
- Uzumaki: When The Cavalry arrive in the form of a large fleet of rescue ships, it seems like the heroes of the story might be saved. Unfortunately, the would-be rescuers last all of a single page before being swept to the depths of the sea by a Mega Maelstrom. There's no hint that they're particularly incompetent, but in the face of a nightmarish Eldritch Abomination, there's never any real chance that they'll survive.
- Hibiki from Vandread runs into a Space Navy version in episode 11. They share their backstory with him just long enough to be wiped out by the bad guys and cause him to suffer some Survivor's Guilt. Another fleet shows up when Gondor Calls for Aid in the Finale, and they actually acquit themselves fairly well in the final battle.
- The Vision of Escaflowne: Any time another nation goes up against the Zaibach Empire, expect it to be a total Curb-Stomp Battle in Zaibach's favor. They have a technological advantage, to be fair, but pretty much the only time you see a Zaibach Guymelef being so much as damaged in these battles is when the main characters are fighting them.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!, in both the anime and real life. Think about it. All monsters in the game have the highly specific role of acting as a meat shield between you and your opponent's monsters. They can die incredibly easily if you have the right deck. On the other hand, they can be upgraded into a Badass Army with Equip Spell Cards.
Asian Animation
- The CDF troops in Eon Kid. Their general tells them to guard his defeated foe (who was a VERY dangerous villain). It ends less like "villain wakes up, pounds the troops, then runs" and more like "new guy pounds the troops, takes other villain and runs." Said new guy was just a normal Flying Mook.
Comic Books
- Quite often, police officers and security guards are easily thwarted by even the lowest D-list super villain, who usually treats them more as irritating pests than serious threats, although he naturally has a harder time against the hero. Similarly, the Army proves useless when the Earth is invaded by aliens or monsters from another dimension. The exception is when the trope du jour is The Real Heroes.
- The DCU:
- Superman: The Atomic Knights are a step up from the usual. While they do have top-notch training, good teamwork and state of the art equipment, they're still essentially Red Shirts.
- In the beginning of The Coming of Atlas, several members of the Science Police are futilely trying to stop a giant monster from rampaging through Metropolis. Then, villain Atlas shows up, kills the monster single-handedly, and proceeds to utterly decimate the whole M.S.P. squad.
- Supergirl: In Bizarrogirl, the Bizarro Justice League is blasted into oblivion by Godship very, very quickly.
- Green Lantern: Same thing with the Green Lantern Corps, with an added element of Conservation of Ninjutsu. An individual Green Lantern (Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, Kilowog, Arisia etc.) is a powerful hero, but masses of nameless background Green Lanterns die in droves.
- Wonder Woman: Even though Themyscira is composed of nothing but immortal women with hundreds of years of combat training, don't expect them to last long against any invader unless Wonder Woman herself is leading the charge. During the '90s and '00s, it was almost a tradition for the Crisis Crossover du jour to kill hundreds if not thousands of Amazons off-screen.
- Marvel Universe:
- In Avengers: The Initiative, the covert-ops Shadow Initiative is re-imagined as a redshirt army in the aftermath of Secret Invasion due to the Thunderbolts now serving that function. Consisting of choice members of the original team, third-rate villains, and Initiative washouts, the Shadow Initiative is sent into hot engagements to soften up the enemy for the big guns. Of the 14 members who went on their first mission, 8 came back alive.
- S.H.I.E.L.D. is a very good example. Until they got reformatted as HAMMER, which threw a pint and a half of mook into the mix, along with a dash of Villain with Good Publicity. They are supposed to be the best agents, operatives, commandos and so on in the world. However, agents would be massacred both individually and en masse by both super villains and normal Mooks. In the Ultimate Marvel universe you just wonder how they recruit. Some 30,000 agents and commandos are killed during the first strike of an Alien Invasion, and later get outmatched by superhumans on multiple occasions, usually while pulling guard duty on super-villains. And one time, their HQ was blown up, they were crippled, and then they got hammered by an army of super powered terrorists led by the Liberators.
- Most of Marvel earthbound superheroes in Jim Starlin's Thanos stories are treated as expendable and ineffectual secondary characters that get eliminated easily to show how reality warping antagonists (Thanos with the Cosmic Cube, Thanos with Infinity Gauntlet, the Magus, the Goddess, Akhenaten and a cosmically empowered Annihilus) are way above their tier.
- The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers is a deconstruction of this. It shows you what it would be like to be a part of a Red Shirt Army. A large part of the story involves the characters either trying to avoid their presumably inevitable demises or flat out pretending they aren't at risk of dying. The Followup The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: Has a two issue arc where 6 of the lowest ranking Decepticons scour a battlefield, lamenting on the death and destruction everywhere. One even mentions how the battle took place, Megatron and Optimus both locked themselves in pods feeding them information from all combatants on their side, he mentions how an entire army was reduced to a set of statistics.
Fan Works
- Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): In this Godzilla MonsterVerse fanfiction, there's the Gamma-5 "Wrecking Crew" assault team whom are sent into the Artificial Zombies' territory alongside Tejada and the Theta team. None of the Wrecking Crew's names are given, and they all end up killed in action or taken for a Fate Worse than Death.
- An Impractical Guide to Godhood: The legionnaires sent after the Golden Fleece suffer rapid attrition against the various threats in the Sea of Monsters, and few of them survive direct combat with a serious enemy unless that enemy wants prisoners or defectors. Only five ships out of thirteen survive long enough for Athena to recommend withdrawing their forces from the region, and one of those ships is too damaged to leave the island it settled on.
- Because Of The War: Taylor triggers at a 100-strong gang war(started specifically to kill her and kidnap proto-love interest Canary). No gang members survive.
- The Night Unfurls: Subverted and defied in the original version. The Rad Arc builds up the threat level of Shamuhaza’s mutated monstrosities by having Kyril’s soldiery, who are previously shown as competent Men of Sherwood, struggle for the first time, taking more casualties than usual. However, these people go to great lengths to avoid being expendable, such as securing the flanks in battle, planning their next actions, freeing the other scattered forces, and replenishing their strength. As the battlefield moves to the Fortress City of Rad (i.e., the climax), Kyril opts to lead a band of twenty to sneak into the fortress city rather than putting all his eggs in one basket. In order to minimize casualties, he diverts the troops to a less problematic area while he and his apprentices press on towards the hornet’s nest. In the end, the hard-fought battle is won, but the narrative treats the losses sustained in Kyril’s company seriously by putting emphasis on the burials, the mourning, and the rebuilding process.
- In Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Story of Arceus, tens of nameless Thieves' Guild members get mercilessly torn apart and tossed into the lava pit at Ember Summit.
- Resident Evil Abridged: From the moment S.T.A.R.S. Alpha team arrives outside the Spencer Mansion, Joseph is the first one to bite it, barely two minutes in. By the time the mission ends, Chris, Jill, Barry, and Brad are the only ones left from Alpha, and Rebecca is the only one left from Bravo Team.
- Speaking of Resident Evil Abridge Parodies, the main running gag in Chris's campaign in Resident Evil 6 The Abridged SP00D is that his men constantly die and aren't anymore useful because they're not the main characters. Chris and Piers are fully aware of this in the parody and don't take their deaths all that seriously, (Chris even predicts that they'll all die before the chapter ends). It becomes a plot point later in the parody when, because the plot demands it, Chris is suddenly angry about losing his men with Piers questioning it the entire time.
Piers: They're just npcs. Why are you suddenly giving a shit?Later: Captain, your sudden fucks given for the npcs is only going to cause you grief. I mean, they're just gonna die in the next few minutes anyway!
- Even in Leon's final chapter a soldier from the BSAA says this:
- In RWBY Grimm Darkness, countless Atlesian soldiers become this at the end of Chapter 7, when Weiss's father is revealed to be the main villain and has every soldier aboard his ship mercilessly slaughtered by the Dark Trinity and Neo. Then he has a whole military base of them killed off by combat mechs he commissioned for the military, and then has his ship open fire on the two escorting it, killing all soldiers aboard them!
- Any group of players in Sword Art Online Abridged who are not recurring characters, are almost always completely helpless on their own. Not because they're too weak, mind you, but because they're too stupid.
- In Ultra Fast Pony, the allegedly elite squad of military pegasi are (initially) known as the Ineffectual Flight Team, and they're every bit as good as their name implies. Several episodes later, they reappear with the new title of Super Effective Flight Team. Unfortunately, "Changing their name did nothing to help their ability to fly!"
Films — Animation
- Taken to absurd levels in The Adventures of Tintin (2011); Sir Francis's crew has British soldiers wearing red. When the pirates board the ship, they are effortlessly wiped out by the pirates leaving Sir Francis to fend off the pirates on his own. Despite Sir Francis's efforts, the battle is lost and the surviving crew members are forced to leap off the ship later anyways.
- In Aladdin and the King of Thieves, of the Forty Thieves, the ones that get the most focus and screentime are Aladdin's father, Casem, Big Bad Saluk, and seven others. As such, the other 31 end up getting arrested and imprisoned by the film's midpoint.
- Mulan:
- The Imperial army, led by Shang's father, stakes out at a village in a mountain pass they expect Shan Yu and the Huns to take to the Imperial City. Unfortunately, thanks to a doll from the village providing the Huns with GPS Evidence, the entire army ends up getting Killed Offscreen, with the recruit army discovering the aftermath. It helps to demonstrate how vicious the Huns are.
- On the subject of the Huns, they aren't immune to this either, as thanks to a Hair-Trigger Avalanche set off by Mulan, the majority of them are wiped out, the onlys left being Shan Yu, his hawk, and his five top generals.
- Invoked and hilariously subverted in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut; a US General Ripper intends to use all of the black men as a massive Human Shield to save them from the Canadians' gunfire. Chef, the leader of the group, is very against this plan and, when the time comes, orders his men to duck.
- The direct-to-video release Superman: Doomsday had members of said army lampshading this before they fight Superman's evil clone.
Soldier 1: What are we doing? We can't fight Superman.
Soldier 2: You're right. We can't fight Superman.
Soldier 3: Dead men walkin'. - Averted in Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo. The Japanese Self Defense Force is actually so competent, it shocks the heroes. There's a reason for this….
- In Toy Story 3, the Sarge (played by R. Lee Ermey) and two other soldiers are the only survivors of the Green Army Men after the Time Skip from 2. "When the trash bags come out, we army men are the first to go." Accepting their mission is complete because Andy has grown up, they parachute out of the window in search of greener pastures. They eventually land at Sunnyside Daycare, after Ken & Barbie have turned it around.
Gamebooks
- Lone Wolf's mission in Book 4 at first is to discover the fate of a hundred strong unit of cavalry led by Captain D'Val. Lone Wolf sets off with a force of fifty Rangers; the medieval equivalent of Special Forces. True to the trope, regardless of whatever decisions the player makes, the entire force is either forced to return home, ends up missing, or killed in increasingly unlikely ways (e.g. bandit ambushes, falling through floorboards in a mine, eaten by a giant squid, eaten by a giant worm, eaten by giant cats, falling into a pit trap). Averted with the actual cavalry Lone Wolf was sent to find. During the book's climax battle they live up to their reputation as fine soldiers and rout their numerically superior foe. Lone Wolf's involvement in that battle isn't actually that significant (no One-Man Army scenario here).
If anyone is wondering why the pit trap death is silly, it was located in the middle of a corridor, activated when Lone Wolf unlocks the door at the end. If its purpose was to keep an intruder from opening the door, it's the most poorly designed trap ever. It was very obviously designed to kill anyone accompanying an intruder opening the door.
Jokes
- A Stormtrooper and a Redshirt get into a gunfight. The Stormtrooper misses every shot and the Redshirt dies anyway.
Literature
- The German soldiers in All Quiet on the Western Front are very, very badly trained, and tend to die in swarms doing things that every experienced soldier knows not to do. The protagonists all survived their first few battles through sheer luck, and by seeing how other people died they've learned how to keep themselves alive — but they despair of explaining this to the New Meat, who continue to get themselves killed. (Given the accuracy of the rest of the novel, this may be Truth in Television, and it would certainly go a long way towards explaining WWI's casualty rates.)
- In World War II, it was noted that replacements (including officers) died at a much higher rate than experienced troops.
- The battle in the next-to-the-last Animorphs book involves one that survives. The US army launches a military force consisting, essentially, of hundreds of soldiers accompanied by a couple dozen Sixth Rangers. And this military force's goal is a suicide mission worthy of the best of them: to launch an attack, in plain view, against a spaceship that "could blow asteroids out of the sky." Ordinarily a Sixth Ranger ranks much higher on the Sorting Algorithm of Mortality. But in this case, Visser One orders the Sixth Rangers killed first, because he takes them more seriously in both a strategic and a personal sense. And the Animorphs manage to sabotage his ship too late to save the Sixth Rangers, but in time for the ordinary soldiers to survive. When they are the survivors, and some kids with superpowers are the casualties, it's a clear example of a plot that thwarts the usual laws of the Sorting Algorithm of Mortality. Toby's Hork-Bajir army get killed a lot, too, near the end of the series.
- In Eric Flint's Belisarius series Rana Sanga comments on the battle described in the Bhagavad Gita
, how it is the most famous battle in all of Indian history and how no one remembers even one of the names of the mere mortals who did all the dying.
- Ciaphas Cain:
- Each of the HERO OF THE IMPERIUM novels will inevitably feature a part where Cain is forced to enter the jaws of hell, usually accompanied only by his sidekick and army (possibly with a few Mauve Shirts thrown in). The trope is however subverted as often as it's played straight, to the end that you can usually never tell if the book's army will survive or not: Several Mauve Shirts in the series actually came from Cain's (more successful) escort missions.
- Amusingly, he once refers to a group of allied soldiers as redshirts. Granted, they are wearing red since they're Mechanicus troops, but they end up slaughtered to a man nevertheless.
- Averted in the Destroyermen series. USS Walker's Lemurian allies do take heavy losses over the course of the series, but they inflict casualties several orders of magnitude worse on the Grik.
- The deghans in the Farsala Trilogy are the ruling and fighting class of Farsala, but when the Hrum launch an invasion they're all dead within two chapters.
- Played with in Gaunt's Ghosts. Occasionally the Tanith First-and-Only is a Redshirt Army, and occasionally they're hyper-competent badasses. It all seems to depend on how prepared they are, and how many of them there are. Some books also contrast their performance, usually favourably, with other units', such as the local armies on Aexe Cardinal in Straight Silver and AT 137 in The Armour of Contempt. The Tanith First-and-Only specialize as scouts and skirmish troops and are excellent in missions of that nature. When used as frontline troops where stealth and mobility is not that useful, they take casualties similar to other units.
- God's Demon. The character Sargatanas increases the ranks of his military with an army of souls, which are normally either mounted as artwork or turned into bricks by the demons (and only doing this because the soul Hani offered to form it after restoring the memories of his former life. This has never been done before (meaning the soul army has a partial element of surprise), as well as the souls using one of their common fates to get behind the enemy army and attack the flanks.
- Clodge ball teams in Idlewild fit: virtual armies of cyborgs, nightgaunts, hobgoblins, and gangsters that are expected to die in large numbers every fight.
- The Invisible Detective: In the climax of Ghost Soldiers, the eponymous monsters end up in a running gunfight with about a dozen human soldiers who encounter and end up protecting the four young detectives. Only three of the heroes' protectors survive the fight.
- Odysseus' men in The Odyssey may be history's first redshirt army: low survival rate (0%) and futile in every battle, Odysseus makes better progress once they're all dead.
- Subverted and used in Old Man's War by John Scalzi. Subverted because the military arms its soldiers with the most advanced weaponry around, gives them telepathic links to each other and their guns and trains them to be incredibly effective soldiers. Used because the universe is just that damn dangerous and 75% of them don't last more than 5 years anyway.
- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: In Dawn of the Dreadfuls, Captain Cannon's company is made up of young men who wear red uniforms and flee from their first several battles. Save for their surgeon and possibly a few men who were wounded earlier, they are wiped out in the last act (albeit during a Hold the Line Suicide Mission, and in a surprisingly fierce Do Not Go Gentle manner). Averted with Lord Paget's regiment in the climax of the same book, who are a Badass Army of cavalrymen, musketeers, and ninjas and also act as The Cavalry.
- The Prophecy of the Stones. Whenever the good guys fight in a battle, expect the vast majority of unnamed characters to die. At the beginning of the final battle, the Army of Light and the Army of Darkness (guess which sides they belong to) are evenly matched in the thousands, but by the end of the battle the Army of Light is reduced to hundreds and hasn't even made a dent in the Army of Darkness. Either the Army of Darkness is scarily competent, or the good guys suck.
- The Martian army in Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan are deliberately constructed to be utterly wiped out on the moment of contact, in order that the course of human society can be changed by making them feel guilty for slaughtering the poor bastards.
- The Cleavers in Skulduggery Pleasant count as this trope, as every major battle they are in ends with all of them dead. Partly lampshaded as it is said that their numbers have been devastated.
- In the Star Wars Expanded Universe novels, there are a series of flash-trained clones grown in special cylinders meant to help supplement the woefully undermanned Grand Army of the Republic. Sadly, these quick-cloned troopers aren't nearly as effective as the properly trained ones. Furthermore, as the Clone Troopers transitioned into Storm Troopers, there were at least some lackluster examples due to a variety of reasons, from the transitioning from Jango clones to less impressive specimens, recruitment from non-clones, and the fact that the Kaminoans rebelled, so the Empire lost some of its best trainers at the time.
- Treasure Island: Trelawney's three manservants are all given single cabins, as if they were important passengers; yet they are all quickly slain and receive little characterization (although old Tom Redruth plays a slightly bigger role).
- The War of the Worlds (1898): The British Army is wiped out by the Martian tripods wielding heat beams and poison gas. Only artillery is effective against the machines, but the guns rarely got a first shot, let alone a second. The Martians themselves are red-shirted, courtesy of Terran microbes.
- Justified in The Winter War by Antti Tuuri. While the Russians resume their offensive with even bigger numbers, a fresh but unexperienced regiment takes over the Taipale front, as the narrator's unit moves to rest. The front line doesn't hold for a day.
- Wool: The scores of workers from Supply add a lot of useful strength and logistics to the mechanics' rebellion, but few of them have names or major roles, their leaders are killed fairly early on, and many of the remaining Supply rebels quickly desert the fight.
- Xeelee Sequence: The Green Army combines this with Child Soldiers. Over a million die by the day fighting a Forever War with the Xeelee.
Live-Action TV
- 24:
- CTU field teams will succeed in their mission only if either Jack Bauer, Curtis Manning, or both are present. If they appear to be completing their mission without a main character, that probably means they're about to be vaporized by a nuclear bomb. This rule also applies to any other armed detail mentioned, including the LAPD, Secret Service, and the freaking Delta Force, all of whom have completely bought the farm at one point or another (for some, repeatedly) while "setting up a perimeter," (a common 24 portent of doom), guarding something or somebody important, or intercepting a fugitive, respectively.
- The Season 7 finale actually subverts audience expectations with the airport security guards when they attempt to rescue Kim Bauer. While most of them are killed, they actually do manage to kill both of her captors, a pair of extremely well-trained agents. One of them actually manages to shoot Kim's male captor through a car windshield one-handed after already getting shot by said captor.
- Special mention goes to the often mocked CTU security guards who, on Days 4 and 5, actually wore red shirts.
- Babylon 5:
- In the Wham Episode, "Severed Dreams", this trope is tweaked with Security Chief Garibaldi arranging sensible defensive tactical positioning for his troops for expected invaders. However, the Narn troopers under his command insist on charging headlong into the fray and the regular guards have no choice but to follow them.
- The episode "GROPOS" has Franklin's father use the station as a staging area before deploying his men to take a heavily guarded fortress. They take the fortress, but most of the men (Including every named character among them apart from General Franklin) die.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
- The Initiative soldiers in Season 4, who took a little under an hour to catch up to the Slayer, and took her 17 seconds to disable the lot of them. This was in training; they lasted less time in actual combat.
- Appears throughout Season 7 with the Potentials. When the army of Potentials storms both the winery and the Hellmouth in the series finale, they take massive losses. Justified Trope by their lack of Buffy-level superpowers and training. Season 8 has newly activated slayers taking up this role.
- Daitetsujin 17 has the Red Muffler Corps, whose role in most episodes is to back up 17 and hold off the Mooks while 17 deals with the enemy robot of the week.
- Doctor Who:
- UNIT has a tendency to fall into this category, their role generally being to hold off the enemy Mooks in a losing battle until the Doctor can figure out how to beat them all in one stroke. Although in some appearances, they buck that trend.
- In their introductory story "The Invasion", they defeat the Cybermen in a conventional battle and their coordination with the RAF and the Russians sees them win the day with the Doctor taking a backseat to most of it.
- In "The Ambassadors of Death" and "The Mind of Evil", they fight normal humans who aren't as well equipped as them.
- In "The Poison Sky", they start off looking like this when the Sontaran army uses a field that makes copper-jacketed bullets expand inside guns to jam them. A fair number of UNIT troops are thus slaughtered when their guns fail. UNIT, upon being told this, gets steel-jacketed bullets and teaches those arrogant bastards that the human race is not to be messed with. The Sontarans' claims of "sport" aside, clearly they aren't that used to their prey fighting back.
- In "Planet of the Dead", they use surface-to-air missiles against the Horde of Alien Locusts, and upon seeing their effectiveness, Captain Erisa Magambo exclaims "I don't believe it! Guns that work!"
- As of 2005, if your security is wearing black uniforms and have guns, you've probably hired one.
- Game of Thrones:
- In Season 5, the Unsullied, stated repeatedly of being the best army in the world, are turning into this. They have seemingly forgotten their basic training of forming up shoulder to shoulder into a shield wall and seem to be no more skilled man-to-man than a group of rebel Meereenese.
- Stannis Baratheon's army becomes this when they face the much larger and less weary Bolton cavalry.
- The Night's Watch is composed mostly of thieves and murderers who join to avoid their punishments. The rest of the kingdom forgets about them as they freeze and fight.
- Robb's diversionary army is seen as completely expendable in-universe.
- Whilst they start off winning a few series of victories against the Tullys when led by Jaime, the Lannister army starts to lose battles and suffers staggering losses in each engagement once Robb Stark enters the fray. For example, that huge force Tywin musters to pillage the Riverlands? Precisely half of it is destroyed when Robb defeats and captures Jaime. The replacement army at Oxcross? Robb destroys that one, too. By the end of Season 3, Tywin has given up trying to beat Robb conventionally, and does so by playing to his own strengths: politics and intrigue.
- Heroes (2006): If Sylar is under attack from Company Agents (excluding HRG and The Haitian), those agents are probably going to die.
- Jericho (2006): The fictional company Ravenwood (a loose allusion to Blackwater), who is supposed to be full of ex SEALs and other Special Ops guys, gets their ass handed to them by guys with no military experience, including a deaf mute girl with a shotgun.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: A side effect of the Plot Armor the main characters have, only the Numenorian warriors and nameless villagers are killed by the pyroclastic flow of Orodruin.
- Lost:
- Every major battle involves one group of redshirts attacking another group of redshirts with the main characters from both sides escaping unscathed:
- The mercenary attack on the Barracks in the fourth season, where three redshirts (and presumably a fourth who was unaccounted for) are shot by redshirt mercenaries in the jungle. They then proceed to open fire on Sawyer, but their Stormtrooper training prevents them from hitting him.
- Subverted Trope if one subscribes to the theory that Claire was killed when a redshirt mercenary with a rocket launcher blew up her house.
- Subverted again when Ben unleashes the smoke monster on the redshirt mercenaries, but only one dies, even after hearing several minutes of terrified screams.
- At the end of the fourth season, a group of redshirt Others attack the redshirt mercenaries and kill them all...with, you guessed it, the exception of their leader.
- Which is even more ironic when said leader kills one of his own redshirts accidentally by kicking a grenade over to their position.
- In the fifth season, the Others use fire arrows to attack the mass of redshirt survivors in 1954. Again, the main characters escape, but most, if not all, of the redshirt survivors are finally killed, ending four seasons of slaughter.
- The DHARMA Initiative seems to have its own redshirt army. In a subversion of this trope, however, a shootout involving Jack, Kate, and Daniel versus Radzinsky and two DHARMA mooks ends with no casualties, not even the redshirts.
- Merlin (2008): The Knights of Camelot, apart from the named ones...and even many of them got it eventually. Or in the case of Sir Leon, a couple times.
- Revolution: As the first season goes on, the Rebels and the Georgian Federation join forces to form an army of 300 men ("The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia"). In the episode "The Longest Day", one Monroe Republic drone strike reduces the number from 300 to 30. President Foster states that this is half of her army wiped out, and she assigned 200 Georgian troops to Miles Matheson.
- Stargate SG-1:
- Any team that accompanies SG-1 through the Stargate. At the same time though...
- SG-11 seem to be hit the worst by this, having their entire team wiped out at least twice.
- The Free Jaffa exist so that the current threat can kill hundreds of thousands of them without actually hurting the real protagonists.
- Any Russian character appearing on the show had a 99% chance of being killed, unless they were female. Even recurring character Colonel Chekov eventually bites it after gaining command of the first Russian starship. Which is promptly destroyed.
- Similarly, the first Chinese starship also gets blasted (although it's not entirely destroyed), off-screen this time. However, before anyone starts saying how anything Russian- or Chinese-made is of poor quality, both ships were US-manufactured, then given to the Russians and the Chinese.
- The Air Force security forces that guard the Cheyenne Mountain complex are a perfect example. They're routinely killed off by various offworld enemies to demonstrate how threatening they are.
- Star Trek: Despite it being the Trope Namer, quite a few of the characters that die in Star Trek: The Original Series are blue shirts or gold shirts. The first broadcast episode of the original series ("The Man Trap") has a body count of four minor crewmen, most of whom of course become monster chow shortly after beaming down to the planet. Ironically, the casualties are two blues, a gold and one unknown wearing a hazmat suit. In fact, no red shirt deaths occur until the seventh episode. The dubious honor goes to Crewman Mathews, who is pushed into a bottomless pit in "What Are Little Girls Made Of?". In addition, this trope is completely averted in "A Taste of Armageddon": Kirk, Spock, and three redshirts beam down to Eminiar VII where, upon landing, they are sent to be killed. All of them survive. And those redshirts in the page image? They actually all survive that episode ("The Devil in the Dark") — the one redshirt casualty in that episode isn't even in that shot!
- Scotty is one of the few characters to wear a red shirt in the original series, and he's one of the few characters to survive into "Next Generation." He does get killed once, but he gets better.
- As Nichelle Nichols points out in one of her ME-TV promos, she wore red all the way through the series — "guess I just wore it better!"
- According to this set of statistics about Star Trek deaths, red shirt deaths actually only make up 58% of the deaths. However, since there are so many red shirts, their mortality rate is actually lower than the yellow shirts' (25 of 239 (about 10.5%) compared to 10 of 55 (about 18%)). In fact, even if you go by 43 being the number of red shirt deaths, the yellow shirts still have a slightly higher mortality rate.
- All in all, Star Trek being the Trope Namer makes this an Unbuilt Trope: Despite some showings of Hollywood Tactics, the Federation's land-based military forces are repeatedly shown to be highly competent, and rarely are deaths of any magnitude simply forgotten, or simply considered unimportant to the plot. As these scenes demonstrate, later shows had the nameless background characters averting Hollywood Tactics and demonstrating great combat skill and effectiveness, even when very poorly supplied and heavily understaffed.note
- Supergirl (2015): In numerous episodes, Supergirl and other heroes will be accompanied into battle by various DEO agents. Chances are, they won't last long.
- Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Notably used in the last episode of Season 1, in which Agent James Ellison takes a fully tooled-out FBI Hostage Rescue Team in to storm a terminator's motel room. The HRT is some 20 or so members strong, fully tooled for bear with bulletproof vests, assault rifles, and helmets, and is merrily dispatched in the space of about two minutes to the beautiful crooning of Johnny Cash.
Music
- Gloryhammer:
- The dwarves that fight Zargothrax in "Apocalypse 1992":
It's the rage, the cosmic rage
The cosmic rage of astral dwarves from Aberdeen
From their mines they will arise and fight
The rage of the dwarves is tonight!
Then they died.- In the music video for "Hootsforce", the good guys' space submarines keep being blown up by Zargothrax's ships until Angus McFife XIII personally knocks him out with the Hammer of Glory.
Pro Wrestling
- In her mission to "purge" the SHINE promotion, Leva Bates amassed a following of men in white masks who sometimes physically interject themselves into conflicts, sometimes without prompting on her part. Most wrestlers don't find them hard to beat up but they can often ward off superior opponents through sheer numbers. And despite the implications they are a baby face group, once saving Su Yung, a Bates target, when Yung was thrown off a balcony by Jessicka Havok.
Roleplay
- This has invariably happened a few times in Dino Attack RPG, among the cases one minor group of disguised agents is accidentally gunned down in a friendly fire incident. Believe it or not, this was actually inverted during the final battle. After Trigger deserted the team he was relentlessly pursued by Pharisee who led a small squad of agents, the only one given any particular development being his second-in-command Montgonel. These events culminated in a violent confrontation between Trigger and Pharisee that resulted in the other being knocked out. When facing the others, Montgonel was critically wounded (he survived, but was out of commission for the rest of the RPG) and Trigger was fatally wounded, while at least three of the aforementioned redshirts that accompanied Pharisee emerged unscathed.
Tabletop Games
- Ars Magica: Grogs are mundane minor characters who do ordinary jobs for Magical Society, like guarding gates and binding books. When roped into magical adventures, they tend to get killed, possessed, stolen by fairies, laid low by magical plague, and/or afflicted by other Butt-Monkey misfortunes.
As minor characters, grogs tend to have bad things happen to them.
- BattleTech the Clans treats its Solahma units as this, they are composed of older warriors who are assigned in menial tasks or send out as shock troopers so they can die fighting. And it should be noted that "older" by Clan standards is 30.
- "Weenie" decks in Magic: The Gathering follow this principle. A Weenie is a cheap (usually one-drop), efficient Creature. A Weenie deck will use a horde of these Creatures to swamp the enemy, usually sustaining heavy casualties in the process. This is also true in the case of tokens; cheap, disposable creatures usually generated en masse from other cards. A particularly successful weenie or token attack with few casualties averts this trope, and becomes a Zerg Rush instead.
- In Paranoia, player characters take on the role of Trouble Shooters, whose job it is to track down trouble in Alpha Complex and shoot it. Given that the PCs are supposed to get in over their heads and die horribly, this means the player characters are the example. They even start as Red-class citizens, which comes with uniforms in the appropriate color...
- In the latest edition, players can also be IntSec Agents with a higher clearance or even Ultraviolet-clearance High Programmers.
- A few environments in Sentinels of the Multiverse include cards representing hero-friendly characters, such as Police Backup in Megalopolis and F.I.L.T.E.R. agents in The Block, who usually focus on attacking villains or hostile environment targets. These are usually very fragile allies who die when they catch any real villain attention.
- Planetary Defense Forces in Warhammer 40,000 are almost uniformly treated as speed bumps by any invader, or for Chaos, a ready supply of expendable minions, generally getting wiped out in the first ten minutes or so of any invasion. The Imperial Guard also fulfills this function when the Space Marines are the protagonists.
- It's been joked that the PDF is the Redshirt Army for the Redshirt Army. Hardly surprising, considering manpower is the only resource the Imperium has in excess, with their commanding officers even more inept than the Guard's, and often inbred Upper Class Twits to boot.
- Averted in that some PDFs are as good as their Imperial Guard counterparts. Also justified, as the PDFs best soldiers and units are usually taken to fill up the ranks of the Imperial Guard. It's basically light infantry vs. the legions of hell. Also the only reason that they are considered one is because everything else is genetically modified, sports ridiculous technology, comes in numbers much larger than theirs or backed by a god of some sort. So the fact that they go up against them anyway makes them a Badass Army if anything.
- The Imperial Guard have been known to subvert this, though, for one very good reason. Sure, the soldiers usually fit the Red Shirt line. But they also have tanks. Lots and lots of tanks.
- And more so, lots of lots upon lots of lots of lots of men. They will drown their enemies in their blood, and bury them under their corpses. The only resource the Imperium of Man is never short is manpower. Your soldiers being worth 20 of theirs isn't much good if they can field 50 times the amount of your soldiers.
- No-where is this made more evident than in the Siege Of Vraks books. The Imperium needs to re-take a world but it's an absolute fortress that would take a vast (even by Imperial standards) deployment of forces to just go take it back today. The alternative option? A 12 year siege that will "only" kill 9 million guardsmen. And then that doesn't even go to plan anyway.
- The average Guardsman is tithed from the top 10% of his world's PDF. He is equipped with armour that'll hold well against most modern small-arms, and armed with a beam rifle that hits like a 7.62mm round (sans the recoil and casing drop) and can be recharged by virtually any power source (including body heat and open flames, though the former option is slow and the latter drastically reduces shelf-life). They are often trained on Deathworlds — planets that, while technically habitable, are so inimical to human life that Siberian winters, the middle of the Amazon, and high noon in the Sahara Desert all look downright hospitable in comparison. If lucky, they face things that want to kill them or possibly eat them. If unlucky, they face the prospect of being enslaved or being tortured to death over decades or even centuries. At worst, the long, drawn-out death is only an overture to an eternity in a Hell that makes Dante's Inferno seem like a Hotel & Spa vacation. And still they hold the line, not because they're particularly brave (by the standards of the setting) but because it's the only option they have. If they fail they die, if they flee they die because now not only does the enemy still want them dead but so do their former comrades, and if they do hold the line then there's almost certainly another chance to die horribly. Crapsack World indeed.
- Want a good way to be scared of this universe? Consider that the standard-issue lasgun has more firepower than most conventional modern ballistic weapons, and standard-issue flak armour can stop a lasgun shot cold while bulletproof vests today can only reliably stop shotgun shells and pistol bullets. Imperial Guardsmen are often better equipped, trained, and supported than any current-day elite soldiers, yet they die in droves. If the real Earth was invaded by an Aeldari warhost, an Ork WAAAGH! or a Tyranid Hive Fleet, we certainly wouldn't last very long at all.
- In light of the above, what prevents Guardsmen from deserting first chance they get? The local commissar, who will be happy to reinforce morale, stiffen resolve, remove dissenters and punish heresy in a single *BLAM*. In Dawn of War, you don't even need to wait for a squad to be demoralized to use the commissar's Execute ability, as using it straight off the bat prevents morale damage and increases attack speed in surrounding squads. That's right: in 40K, the redshirts sometimes die before even seeing battle.
- Ork armies also count. They are more numerous than every other race in the galaxy (except the Tyranids, if we include the large force of Tyranids who haven't entered the galaxy yet). They die in droves, but many more are ready to take their place.
- Speaking of Tyranids, the average gaunt warrior is born with no digestive system; they're expected to die in combat looooong before starving to death is even a remote possibility, though they're closer to the role of Mooks.
- If the men and women of the Imperial Guard are pathetic, than Chaos cultists are even more. Most cultists are armed with autoguns (basically just classic gunpowder firearms or stubbers which aren't even made out of scif-fi materials which autoguns at least are) and improvised melee weapons and armour with the odd flamer or heavy stubber (basically a M2 Browning if it's a good pattern, or a large caliber stubber if not). Most of them don't even have combat training, they just rely on sheer zeal. As far as the Chaos Astartes are concerned, cultists are only good for using up the enemies' ammunition or as unwitting fuel for their profane rituals (if the legion is the Iron Warriors, they can also dig trenches and be used as field rations). However the Alpha Legion actually bother training their cultists, and as a result they can be scarily competent as saboteurs and field agents.
- In Warhammer: Age of Sigmar the Freeguild fill this role handily in the background fluff. If an army is going to be destroyed to build up how powerful a threat is, or even just to reveal that the threat exists, you can bet that it will destroy a local Freeguild company. Being normal humans in a dark fantasy setting doesn't offer much of a life expectancy. It's worth noting, the Freeguilds are typically well trained and well armed, wearing decent armour and weilding powerful gonnes and cannons, it's just that what they go up against is that dangerous.
Web Animation
- The Green Helmets of Cheat Commandos aren't held in terribly high regard by Gunhaver — he hangs up on one pleading for support in a tough battle so that he and the other main characters can celebrate Thanksgiving, dismissing Silent Rip's concerns for their safety by pointing out that they have "like, fifty of them". Even the action figures are viewed as disposable — the straplines on the packaging of their discount 3-packs boast that they're "Extra Melty!".
- The titular Red and Blue armies of Red vs. Blue are an invoked version of this trope. They're made up of the most expendable soldiers in the army, told to fight a made up war, so Project Freelancer can have a realistic training environment for their elite agents.
- Wolf Song: The Movie: the alphas of four packs ultimately side with Damien and rush off to battle, but since they were introduced in that scene, this late into the movie (when there is about 15 minutes left), within the first minute of the battle, they are all either killed off or at the very least incapacitated while doing hardly a scratch to the Big Bad. Oh and said villain doesn’t just kill Red Shirts (yep even major characters aren’t safe from him).
Web Comics
- In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: "Futures Trading", the author says in the Alt Text before the Final Battle: "I think a lot of these soldiers are going to die VERY quickly, because Anthony and I are getting VERY tired of drawing all of them." Also, they're humans fighting against an army of intelligent dinosaurs with better weapons, so it's no wonder they're a bit squishy. Even the Doctor as one of their leaders can think of no better Rousing Speech to give them than to say that they're probably going to die but at least they'll get to punch a dinosaur first.
- In Goblins, they wipe out part of an army by using a shield that triggers random major magic effects whenever it's hit. This tends to subvert the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy in that the redshirts that do hit are probably doomed while those who miss may live, or perhaps the goblin is doing a redshirt-type act, as in the background it hints at the word "redshirt" not "redshirts" — which reminds long timers that the shield is random enough to backfire killing the goblin, upgrading the enemies, summoning weird dangerous stuff, or worse.
- In Homestuck, the pawns serving both armies on the Skaian battlefield are examples of this.
"'A Foot Soldier's Guide to Combat'
most of the diagrams in this book involve a soldier advancing by a single tile, either straight ahead, or diagonally when lunging with a weapon.
No wonder these guys are so easy to kill." - The Order of the Stick:
- Averted where the Azure City Army gives a damn good accounting of itself. Yes, they lose but they take a lot of Mooks with them and manage a fighting retreat in good order.
- Played for Laughs with Tarquin's forces from the Empire of Blood. He has an entire army surround the heroes for no other reason than to provide dramatic tension, though they're also trained in plot-critical reveals.
Random Soldier: General Tarquin has been in control of the empire the whole time!
Tarquin: Yes, yes, we did that one already.
- Sidekicks: Whenever the Under Corps are lending their help in a major crisis, they turn into this.
- Terra Incognita (2023): The hundred troop First Recon company is introduced with the acknowledgment that they are facing an impossible battle and an arrogant inexperienced CO who won't let them retreat. They are swiftly slaughtered with very few getting names or any characterization.
Western Animation
- Avatar:
- Actually averted in Avatar: The Last Airbender, where Zuko voices out against sending in a team of right out of training cadets into battle to be used as a diversion in the war. However it was this action that prompted his father to scar his face and banish him in the first place. Played straight almost all the time, to show the heroes/villains as prodigies, or tougher than the norm. The Heroes commonly go off against greater odds (like the earth kingdom palace guard) and come out on top, the entire Earth Kingdom army failed to stop the Fire Nation Invasion, and an elite team all went down against Ty Lee. During the Seige of the North Pole, this trope was combined with mooks, during the day, the (sun-empowered) Fire-Nation began defeating Water Benders left and right, during the night, the (moon-empowered) water benders beat them with ease.
- The Legend of Korra:
- The Metalbending Police appear to fill this role considering how the Equalists use electric gauntlets and Mini Mechas made of platinum that the former are no match for.
- The White Lotus mooks guarding Zaheer's happy little bunch. Zaheer and Co. cut through them like a hot knife through butter. This is somewhat justified though, as none of them were prepared for the idea of Zaheer gaining Airbending abilities.
- Averted with the Metal Clan, who are able to hold their own against Zaheer of all people, in a world where even the most skilled fighters are usually no match for airbenders due to lack of experience.
- Disenchantment: The Knights of the Zog Table. Aside from Pendergast, Turbish and Mertz (these three seem to be wearing protective Plot Armor at all times), the other knights are not so lucky. Every time that Pendergast and his men go on a quest, at least one of them dies in a humiliating manner.
- In Exo Squad, the other exosquads are treated like this. Especially Baker Squad. In early episodes, the Jumptroopers were also treated this way, but once the Charlie-Fives show up, this ceases.
- Futurama. Suicidal redshirt charges are the only page in Zapp Brannigan's playbook.
Zapp Brannigan: Stop exploding, you cowards!
- Brannigan even brags about how he defeated an army of killbots by sending wave after wave of redshirts at them until the killbots exceeded their kill limit.
- In "Into the Wild Green Yonder"
Zapp: We made it through, Kif. How many men did we lose?Kif: All of them.Zapp: Well, at least they won't have to mourn each other.
- Generator Rex zig-zags this. On one occasion they failed to take on a gang, armed with Crossbows and the element of surprise note . When stuck in the Bug Jar, Calan and 4 others (two masked, two unmasked) stand by the heroes and fight off the enemies admirably. During the attack on the base, they're taken down, but by the end of the episode, they regroup to fight off the enemy Mooks. Most of the time, they just shoot ineffectively at the monster and the heroes save the day.
- Jentry Chau vs. the Underworld: In Episode 9, Ed and the house ghosts try to sneak into Bixi to rescue Flora, but they are quickly captured and covered in barnacles.
- Johnny Test has Sky Brigade, which is essentially a Red Shirt Fighter Squadron. When the Monster of the Week terrorizes Porkbelly, they either get shot down in what effort they make to save the day, or retreat as if they can't deal with the problem themselves without Johnny and Dukey's help.
- OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes: In "POINT to the Plaza", the rank-and-file P.O.I.N.T. troopers don't accomplish much in the fight against the giant Gloop aside from a few of them getting eaten.
- Rick and Morty: In "Rickdependence Spray", Rick gets Morty to bet which soldiers accompanying them will live the longest. They are right to believe Blazen - who ironically and literally wears red - will achieve that.
- Samurai Jack: In "The Birth of Evil - Part 1", The Emperor takes a whole regiment of his men to reach the center of the black mass. They don't last long as sharp trees burst from the ground with multiple Scream Discretion Shots as each horse's rider vanishes until the Emperor is left.
- Star Trek: Lower Decks: In "No Small Parts", the crew of the Solvang show up just long enough to establish that the Pakleds have become a serious threat (even if they're still pretty stupid) before the ship is destroyed with no survivors. Oh, and it's probably no coincidence that the Solvang herself is adorned with a red stripe.
- Star Wars:
- Star Wars: Clone Wars: When Anakin Skywalker takes off alone to chase an enemy Force-user, Obi-Wan orders a squadron of clone troopers to follow him and save him from getting himself killed. When the clones arrive, they proceed to split up and get wiped out over the course of about three minutes, without ever seeing the enemy. Amusingly enough, clone troopers are the predecessors of storm troopers, perhaps indicating that the trope is inheritable.
- Star Wars Rebels: Phoenix Squadron, introduced in Season 2. First appearing in "The Siege of Lothal", the Squadron is shown to do pretty well against average TIE fighter squadrons, but near the end, find themselves on the receiving end of a Curb-Stomp Battle from Darth Vader, with only a small number of them surviving. Afterward, they usually have at least one unnamed pilot getting killed whenever they get a space battle scene.
- Steven Universe has a Fantastic Caste System/Hive Caste System that the Gem Homeworld has for every type of Gem, such as the Ruby Soldiers, who are a literal example of this trope, often stated as common, disposable soldiers that can be shattered and replaced at their masters' whim.
- Averted in Superman: The Animated Series in the episode "Apokolips...Now!" The well-equipped and well-trained Metropolis Police fend off the storm troops of an extraterrestrial invasion all by themselves with no help from Supes at all. They also had to act without any help from the military, the local base having been destroyed in an earlier pre-invasion attack.
- The Enforcers in SWAT Kats serve as nothing more than mere cannon fodder against the Villain of the Week before the titular characters swoop in to save the day.
- Averted in The Venture Bros. The OSI's grunts are stunningly effective at slaughtering villainous henchmen. In fact, they seem to enjoy it a little too much.
GODDAMMIT! They are so useless!
— Chris Redfield talking about his own soldiers in Resident Evil 6 The Abridged SP00D
