"Hu... well... it's never 'a kobold'.... It's invariably — lots of kobolds."
— Ned the Head, Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic
Defeating a strong opponent with a very large number of disposable combatants. Usually used by the evil side, since their definition of "disposable" will stretch a lot farther.
As an Evil Overlord, it is important to choose your Evil Minions so that this does not apply to your troops, since it usually doesn't work against heroes.
The Trope Namer is the popular real-time strategy game StarCraft I. The Zerg were more Explosive Breeders as a counter to the wider technology options of the enemy; the original meaning of the term was more a form of Sequence Breaking/Cheese Strategy where the Zerg race focused on as many base-level units as possible to "rush" to the opposing force and the invasion would take out all the Worker Units of their opponents. Even if it's a Suicide Mission where the enemy was able to fend off that first wave, they would have to spend more time recovering from the damage while the Zerg had more breathing room to reach the more advanced options. It evolved into the current definition by Memetic Mutation.
See also Death of a Thousand Cuts and We Have Reserves. Often features a bunch of Vanilla Units. The Minion Master will frequently rely on this. A favorite tactic of The Hive (Unsurprising, given the Trope Namer is a premier example). May lead to The War Sequence. Often a component of Hollywood Tactics. Contrast the Elite Army. Sub-Trope of Quantity vs. Quality.
Examples with their own pages:
Other examples:
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Advertising
- Raid Insecticide Campaign: This Arabic ad
for Raid Multi-Insect Killer has a cockroach and a mosquito commanding an army of both flying and crawling insects to attack said Raid tin. However, it's rendered moot when the tin sprays their way, eliminating the entire army.
Comic Books
- The DCU:
- Knightfall involved Bane throwing villain after villain for Batman to defeat in order to wear him down both physically and mentally. This results in Batman being easy pickings for Bane who proceeds to deliver a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to Bats, breaking his back.
- Krypton No More: Superman and Supergirl fight a warrior alien race called the J'ai whose favorite strategy is multiplying until they overwhelm their enemy by sheer force of numbers.
- Death & the Family: Insect Queen protects her hive-like lair by overwhelming hostile forces with huge swarms of giant insects.
- Wonder Woman (1942): Villainy Inc. is able to capture Queen Hippolyte by setting a bunch of the inmates of Reformation Island to ambush her.
- The Earthwar Saga: Right like the Resource Raiders try to overwhelm the Legion of Super-Heroes with huge numbers of soldiers, the Khunds try and overwhelm the Earth's defense force thanks to their vast army.
- Dungeon Twilight The Big Bad simply throws a billion of conscripted soldiers at his enemies who can breath without his magic. Even though the heroes have a Badass Army of their own and firepower in an age of sword, they have to surrender after the first wave.
- Marvel Universe:
- Annihilation: The Annihilation Wave's main tactic is throw endless wave of bug monsters at their enemies. The Wave have no preservation instincts and there's a whole lot of them, so it works. It also helps that their enemies are, for one reason or another, entirely uncoordinated against them.
- Captain America: In the Civil War (2006) issues, Steve mentions that most HYDRA mooks have no hand-to-hand combat training, and their strategy of choice is to overwhelm the opponent by sheer strength of numbers and weaponry. He also points out that this generally translates to no regard for human life.
- Iron Fist (1975): Hired by the Meachums to kill Iron Fist, Batroc the Leaper comes with a small army's worth of goons. Danny's only saved from defeat by the sudden arrival of a mysterious ninja.
- The Immortal Iron Fist: Part of Bride of Nine Spiders' combat style. Hydra under Xao's leadership operates in a similar matter, simply throwing endless bodies at the heroes which proves rather effective if wasteful.
- The Transformers: Dark Cybertron: In the endgame, Shockwave summons the Ammonites, a faction from another species of shapeshifting robots, to act as his muscle while he finishes his plan. As in all the Ammonites, all seventy billion of them.
- The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers: The final battle is the remaining Wreckers Zerg Rushing Overlord in a desperate last ditch attempt to take him down, not because they couldn't come up with a better strategy but simply because that was the only way they could hope to beat him. It still takes Ironfist blowing him apart from the inside and Impactor giving one last beatdown to finally put him down for good. Even then by the end of the fight Impactor, Verity Carlo, Ironfist, Kup, and Perceptor are the only Wreckers who aren't dead or horrifically wounded.
Comic Strips
- The Far Side: One strip shows an amoeba army with the strategy "divide and conquer". Another uses the same joke with multi-level marketing, "Just keep dividing and selling!"
Fan Works
- Abyssal Plain: After the Undersiders and Breakthrough accidentally take over a farm ran by a Farmer boogeyman, said Farmer returns with hundreds of Others to retake it. While the Undersiders and Breakthrough hold their own despite the number advantage, they still end up fleeing the farm as a result.
- Being Dead Ain't Easy: When in the Soul Room, hundreds to millions of Funny Bunnies swarm Joey and Kaiba.
- Better Angels starts up with the Walker invasion that took place during Season 2 of The Walking Dead. The tactics of Rick and Shane are notably similar when defending Carl from the Walkers.
- In The Broken Day, this is noted to be one of Hydra's favoured strategies when fighting wizards; as Neville reflects in a flashback, they can afford to basically strap bombs and weapons on to muggles and send them out to fight until the target is dead.
- Calvin & Hobbes: The Series: The "Last Resort Robo-Launcher" is a swarm of hundreds of locust-like robots that do this to the heroes.
- Several Automatic Vault Crackers in Cell Machine 's many mods and fangames sum up to this trope with Movers, Rotators, and their variants going basically everywhere to slowly chip away at the vault. See also: this video.
- Coeur Al'Aran:
- Arcanum:
- The cause for the fall of Menagerie, when it was swarmed by Grimm before the story begins.
- A massive army of Grimm from Menagerie, consisting of at least Nevermore and Beowolves, attack Vale's Collegium from within the Azure Archives.
- A Hunter or Something: No matter how hard the people of Remnant try to clear the Grimmlands, the Grimm always come back to reclaim them, as they quickly reproduce in large numbers and overwhelm all defenses. Ren tries to argue that by doing this they keep getting rid of the stronger grimm and the ones that come back are weaker, to which Jaune counters by saying that to a civilian with their aura blocked, an adult Ursa and a baby Ursa are the same and that the weak grimm become strong over time anyway.
- Arcanum:
- Death in Scampia: An Agency team find themselves surrounded by gang soldiers of the Camorra, backed up a hostile crowd of locals hurling rocks and abuse.
Here were the gunslingers of the Camorra clans, cheap and expendable and inexhaustible in supply. Any other time they would have been an object of derision to the cutting-edge killers of the Agency. Now the girls could sense their handlers' fear and the knowledge made them taut like a mainspring, ready to erupt into a murderous frenzy that would not stop until everyone was brought down in a hail of bullets.
- Dekiru: The Fusion Hero!: During the USJ incident, Class 1-A, even separated, is doing fine against the League of Villains as most of them are two-bit thugs that even they can handle. However, there's so many of said thugs that it's actively preventing them from reuniting at the entrance. Those at the entrance can't leave to help either, as they're being besieged by villains as well on top of having to protect their two severely injured teachers.
- Downfall (Bleach) has this tactic both played straight and inverted. The Exequia Troops of Unohana's army are mindless drones that employ this tactic occasionally as skirmishers. They are repeatedly shown to pose occasional difficulty to even Lieutenant-strength opponents due to their sheer tenacity. They make no sound—not even when they're hurt or killed—and will keep coming until they're dealt a fatal injury.
- Enemy of My Enemy: The Brutes try a version of this, charging in a solid wave of fur and fury against a wall of Jackal-shield-wielding Elites, in a scene reminiscent of soccer hooligans rushing a fence. In this case, the fence pushes back and holds firm, while the Elites' human allies fire down on the Brutes. It's stated that the Brutes were so tightly packed, dozens were dead on their feet because there was no room to fall to the ground once they were killed. This is, unfortunately, truth in writing, as many examples of people dying in tightly packed areas do feature corpses that are only revealed to be such when the place starts thinning out, causing them to fall down due to no longer being supported by the people around them.
- Fractured (SovereignGFC): The Reapers are the weak faction against the Trans-Galactic Republic's much sterner starships after the Citadel races would have been the "Zerg" against the Reapers had the TGR not pulled a Big Damn Heroes/The Cavalry. In the sequel, the Flood engage in this tactic with a twist—endless weaker soldiers...that also endlessly revive... Cue the heroes emulating their enemy.
- Hive Daughter: Deconstructed when one of the people trapped in the Canberra quarantine (and likely influenced by the Simurgh) suggests that the crowd rush the walls together before they're complete, because "There's too many of us. They might get some, but there's no way they could get us all! We have to go now, before the permanent fencing is in place!" Myriad points out that since the crowd is unarmored, and the quarantining forces have machine guns, they could in fact kill every last one.
- Ignited Spark: This was supposed to be the role of the Trigger Villains during the USJ attack. Overwhelm All Might in number, make him waste time to weaken him enough so Hood and the Nomu would finish him off.
- The Long Walk: This dry exchange happens between an OC and Mikey:
Mikey: The Shredder thinks if he throws enough Foot ninja at a problem, it'll go away.
Breech: That's right. There'll be less Foot ninja for a start. - Making Blue Archive In Blue Archive: The Masked Swimsuit Gang's real plan: Sending in their thousands of members all at once, to rush straight to D.U. and destroy Kaiser Corporation's headquarters. A good deal of the schools' elites who try to defend are not taken down by the tactic, but there are so many girls attacking simultaneously that a lot of them get past the defenders to wreak havoc.
- Mega Man Reawakened, Cudabots try this on Megaman, and bee robots do this to Roll.
- Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!: Izuku, All Might, and Firestorm are swarmed by hundreds of robots inside Mt. Fuji. Firestorm manages to take out the majority of them while Izuku runs to find his spaceship, but they're besieged by even more robots when they confront the Villain responsible.
- No Mutant Left Behind: A variant. When the X-Men learn about the Foot Clan from the Hamatos (specifically that the entire clan's purpose is to commit familicide against the Hamato Clan), Professor X decides that they need to go down. So, after using Cerebro to locate the Foot's base, Leonardo, Raphael, and numerous faculty and students attack them. They outnumber the Foot and have superpowers, so they overwhelm Shredder's soldiers pretty quickly (especially after they take out Tiger Claw and Dogpound).
- Percy Jackson: Spirits: The default attack strategy of the dark spirit hordes is basically just to cause as much chaos and destruction in a short a timespan as possible. Because they don't work together in groups very well, this works against them.
- Point Me at the Skyrim: Frost Bite spiders go for this maneuver once Antares hits them with her fear aura. She didn't know how bugs would normally interpret her fear inducing powers, but the entire swarms turns on her in a second.
- Pokémon Reset Bloodlines and its sidestories feature several examples, to varying degrees of success:
- During Chapter 23, Belladonna and her group take over the Gringy City power plant by overwhelming the defenses with a horde of mind-controlled Poison-types, most of them relatively weak. It works, but then problems come during the occupation. Since they no longer have the element of surprise or an enormous numerical advantage] (due to having to spread themselves out more thinly to hold the plant as opposed to being able to concentrate their attacks on the personnel), competent attackers like Ash and company are able to defeat huge numbers of the hypnotized Pokémon.
- In the Lorelei Interlude, a group of Rocket grunts attacking the Mandarin Island Stadium try this on Lorelei and Frey, but despite the sheer numbers, the couple manages to take them all down using only three Pokémon each.
- In Chapter 34/35, most of the latter part of Ash's battle in the Saffron Gym amounts to this. While Ash and his Pokémon manage to hold their own for a while against the hordes of Sabrina's Psychic-types, eventually they start to wear out. Fortunately, Dexter manages to bring every Pokémon Ash has caught with the help of his Exeggutor herd (who can use Teleport) to level the playing field.
- Red in his Five Island Interlude is forced to deal with this with the Rocket Grunts in the warehouse, though it's a more gradual example, as the plan is to lure him deep into the hideout to take all of his Pokémon. He's saved by a combination of managing to improvise on the fly, and the timely arrival of Yellow who broke out of captivity with Ratty's help.
- Queen of the Swarm: Taylor has the potential to do this but hasn't due to lack of Zerg. Though she is looking to fix this for when Leviathan attacks.
- Rise of the Minisukas: The titular Minisukas are eight-inch tall Asuka's alternate selves bearing tiny replicas of the Lance of Longinus. Obviously, one of them is no threat to an Angel. Good thing there are billions of them, and even though their spears are not as powerful as the real article, they can still pierce through an Angel's core. Their tactic against Sachiel consisted on swarming around the giant Eldritch Abomination, covering its body completely and stabbing it to death.
- The Rush shows what happens when the titular, dreaded event happens on a small, simple farmstead. Needless to say... it's painfully obvious that it doesn't end well for the two... at all.
- The Swarm of War: Volran actually has it as a tactic — a psionically reinforced stampede of a million Zerg isn’t easy to stop.
- Star Wars vs Warhammer 40K:
- Standard doctrine for the Separatists is to flood the battlefield with Mecha-Mooks and rely on their easily replaceable nature and sheer numbers to make up for their subpar individual combat abilities.
- Standard Imperial doctrine generally boils down to "flood the battlefield with Imperial Guardsmen, then deliver knockout blows with the important troops and units". No longer having the vast reserves of their own galaxy to draw from means this mentality is a problem that they have to wean themselves away from, but change comes slowly to Imperials if at all.
- The Republic Navy is outclassed by the Imperial Navy in almost every way except when it comes to FTL travel. So far, the only way that the Republic Navy has effectively held their own against the Imperial Navy in a Space Battle is to outnumber them by so much that any losses the Imperials manage to inflict on the Republic fleet is like Shooting the Swarm.
- Tarkin's Fist: The PLA resorts to human wave attacks as a means of pushing back the Imperial invaders.
- Worldwar: War of Equals: Discussed between Atvar and and Kirel before the invasion of Earth. The Conquest Fleet consist of 35,000,000 infantrymales and note that no Human military can match them in those numbers. This tactic actually works in some of the small countries of Earth, helps dominate the skies, and gives superpower nations such as America and China a run for their money.
Live-Action TV
- Alien Worlds (2020): The day side of Janus is home to small, insect-like creatures that can overwhelm the must larger and stronger pentapods by attacking them in large swarms, which can quickly overwhelm and cover the larger creatures.
- Andromeda: The Magog favor this tactic, most of the time not even bothering with weapons other than their claws and paralytic spit. It's later revealed that these are unknowingly scouts for the real invasion, which have weapons and strategies on par with the other factions as well as numbers.
- Battlestar Galactica (2003): The Cylons' favored tactic for aerial combat is to deploy a massive number of Raiders against the much smaller human fleet. The shots of them emerging from Basestar ships has been compared to a swarm of insects emerging from a hive.
- Blackadder Goes Forth: Deconstructed, but sadly for the characters, practiced anyway:
Melchett: Field Marshal Haig has formulated a brilliant new tactical plan to ensure final victory in the field.
Blackadder: Ah. Would this brilliant plan involve us climbing out of our trenches and walking very slowly towards the enemy? - Deadliest Warrior: In one episode, the team runs a pseudo match of vampires versus zombies. It's admitted that in a single combat scenario, a super human vampire versus one zombie would end with the zombie being demolished. This results in the team running three vampires vs two hundred and ninety-seven zombies (ninety-nine per vampire). The idea is demonstrated in the fight, where two of the vampires fall to the attacking zombie forces simply and entirely because they're overpowered by massive numbers. The last one barely survives the battle.
- Doctor Who: The Daleks did this in "Destiny of the Daleks", draping some of their own number with bombs and sending them off to blow up the Movellans with predictable results: the Doctor blows them up before they arrive.
- The Expanse: To disable the giant railguns that can annihilate even the largest ships with a single shot that are guarding Medina Station, the heroes cobbled together dozens of one person drop pods for a massed commando assault. Even with every shot being an instant kill, the guns just can't fire fast enough to destroy more than a fraction of the drop pods before they are too close to aim it, making a zerg rush actually the approach with by far the highest survival chance.
- Game of Thrones:
- Tywin's method for fighting Robb's forces is to continue to send wave after wave of enemies at him as opposed to actually use legitimate tactics or rely on skill. Although Robb wins every battle, Tywin has a greater number of forces. Naturally, this comes back to bite him in the ass when the losses finally pile up so that House Lannister is forced to band with House Tyrell for security.
- The Army of the Dead's primary strategy is this, overwhelming the living's forces through sheer numbers (they have well over 100,000 corpses) and a willingness to do whatever it takes to kill, climbing on top of each other to climb walls and drown enemies in a sea of corpses and using their own bodies to extinguish flames. It's pretty terrifying each time it happens, especially at Hardhome and their final battle against the living at Winterfell.
- GoGo Sentai Boukenger has a heroic example. After their combined mecha fail to defeat Gaja, they separate all their vehicles and swarm him with all of them at once (combined with a good dose of Heroic Resolve), successfully overwhelming and destroying him.
- Kamen Rider Ryuki: Kamen Rider Imperer (a.k.a. Spear in Kamen Rider Dragon Knight) is contracted to an entire herd of gazelle Mirror Monsters instead of the one monster most Riders have a contract with. His Finishing Move involves the herd running at the foe and hitting him (using looped CG footage), building it up to Imperer himself kneeing the villain for the final blow.
- Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation: After an initial attack by a relatively small number of Foot Clan ninja in the first episodes, the Shredder angrily declares his intention to rally all of his followers in New York City and crush the Turtles with sheer numbers. It likely would have succeeded without the intervention of Venus de Milo, who proceeded to Mind Rape Shredder.
- Power Rangers Lost Galaxy: In the Grand Finale, this is how the Centaurus and Stratoforce megazords meet their demise. They form the first line of defense as Trakeena sends her entire army of Stingwingers on a Suicide Attack against Terra Venture and the rangers. The megazords are build for fighting giant monsters, and thus have great trouble to even hit the human sized Stingwingers. Eventually the Stingwingers completely cover the megazords from head to toe, and then trigger the bombs they were wearing. Goodbye Stratoforce and Centaurus.
- Stargate-verse:
- Stargate Atlantis: The Wraith prefer this kind of tactic. Their tech may have been inferior to the Ancients, but with wave after wave of meat shields at their disposal, it didn't really matter.
- Stargate Universe: The drones are somewhat closer to the trope than the Wraith. They use nothing except fighter-sized attack ships controlled by an unarmed command ship, and their sole battle tactic is to attack from every direction until the enemy dies.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: This is one of the tactics the Dominion employs on account of only needing a few days to grow their Jem'Hadar clone soldiers into combat-ready adulthood. Case in point, when the Tal Shiar and Obsidian Order attack the Changeling homeworld with a "large" fleet of 23 capital ships, the Dominion retaliate with 150 small attack ships, which completely swarm and overwhelm the Romulans and the Cardassians.
- The Walking Dead: The Governor admits his people aren't as skilled as Rick's group, but that their numerical advantage makes up for it.
- In general, walkers are at their most dangerous when gathered into large groups. Massive 'herds' numbering in the thousands(or even millions) wander the countryside and can easily overwhelm most settlements. Fighting a herd directly is usually suicide, the best options either being to draw it away or avoid getting it's attention until it passes.
Myths & Religion
- Japanese Mythology has stories of the Hyakki Yagyou, the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, a collective — and sometimes, a violent riot — of innumerable Yōkai.
Pinball
- Zen Pinball: Several tables have a mode where small figures of enemies will pop up directly on the playfield and begin advancing relentlessly towards the flippers. Whether it be xenomorphs in Aliens, vikings in Castle Storm, zombies in Plants vs. Zombies Pinball or Walkers from The Walking Dead, you'll be scrambling to knock down all the enemies with the ball while hoping it doesn't bounce straight down the middle.
Web Animation
- Dreamscape: Vampire Lord can send out a swarm of bats from his cape to attack.
- DSBT InsaniT: This is the main means of attack by the Biting Blue Fish.
- RWBY:
- The general strategy of the Grimm. While even novice huntsmen can cleave through packs of younger Grimm with ease, the sheer number of Grimm means that they will eventually overwhelm a defender if they prolong the assault. They launch continuous, relentless attacks, with each subsequent attack being worse and worse as the negative emotions caused by the previous attacks attract more Grimm to the area. And that's just the little ones...
- During the events of Volume 8 when Salem's forces manage to take down the city defenses for Atlas, she uses an army of Grimm to charge in and destroy it with the Atlas Military being the only thing standing between them and the city.
- TableTop: Nika Harper's strategy in the Stone Age episode is to prioritise using the breeder to create more meeples without developing her tribe's agriculture or tool-making, a tactic which she explicitly calls "zerging".
- Put into action in this simulation of twenty Tyrannosaurus rex against ten thousand angry chickens.
Webcomics
- Charby the Vampirate: King Rodericke's subjects stream out of the caves in which the Vampire Kingdom resides in waves to take on Zerlocke. Unfortunately for them he is functionally immortal, luckily for Rodericke he's not actually trying to defeat the Kingdom.
- Debugging Destiny: Ignacia triggers one by sending all the people she has dominated with her Hypnotic Eyes to stop King from escaping her lair.
- Endstone: At one point, the main characters are five of the greatest fighters in the world, but the toads are legion enough to wear them down through numbers.
- Girl Genius:
- Among its many, many other defenses, Castle Heterodyne can resort to unleashing every clank and construct abomination in its bowels at an aggressor.
- Agatha's Dingbots tend to use this when making repairs or otherwise assisting her. They are individually tiny and only have one or two tools each but there are a lot of them and they seem to have a Hive Mind of sorts so they can work together to solve quite complex problems.
- Among its many, many other defenses, Castle Heterodyne can resort to unleashing every clank and construct abomination in its bowels at an aggressor.
- Homestuck:
- The primary tactic of Felt members Eggs and Biscuits is to use their respective time-traveling implements in tandem to swarm enemies. With themselves.
- Vriska and Meenah raise up a ghost army to bring down the Big Bad, who happens to also be a Physical God, by swarming him with every ghost they can find in the afterlife.
- The Noob: The people the characters are fighting in one strip are a merger of many anti-PvP guilds, whose players inevitably suck, but there are many of them.
- The Order of the Stick: Redcloak's main tactic in his assault on Azure City is to drown the human defenders, who have better training and equipment, under an endless tide of hobgoblins, until he is on the receiving end of a Diving Save Taking the Bullet and realizes that he is sacrificing actual lives to fulfill a grudge. Later on, some of the city's survivors decide to try to slow down the horde at a choke point; the enemy just rushes the hole and tramples them before they can so much as raise their swords.
- Later in the comic it's revealed that the god who created the goblinoid races, Fenris, made them fast breeders in order to allow them to overwhelm all of the other races by sheer numbers and take over the world, but when they didn't manage to do this quickly enough he lost interest in them and abandoned them in favor of the many more powerful monsters he had created.
- Outsider: The Umiak's primary strategy during wartime. In one battle, Umiak warships outnumbered the Loroi fleet nearly three to one. Later on, the Umiak begin to invade Loroi space with enormous numbers of ships of all types, which is referred to as a "gate-crasher" attack.
- Schlock Mercenary: The resurrected ancient oafans have enough warships that they were able to find a top-secret battlefleet by using a brute-force search pattern on the entire galaxy.
Descension Fleetarch: If it makes you feel any better, you were in the last place we looked.
- Second Empire: The First Empire's invasion of Ziragalen. When first seen from afar, there are so many Daleks massed in the first strike, they are mistaken for a storm.
- Sluggy Freelance:
- The Maraudites of Stick Figure use this, but combined with acid blood, this makes for an unforeseen disadvantage.
- In the "Aylee" chapter, this seemed to be the only tactic the "ghouls" in an alternative dimension had against the humans. The humans had high-tech weapons, but were still somehow driven into exile in orbit by the sheer numbers which the unarmed ghouls could muster to rush at them in. They also used this tactic in the decisive final battle when attacking a critical point.
- The Maraudites of Stick Figure use this, but combined with acid blood, this makes for an unforeseen disadvantage.
- Stand Still, Stay Silent: The crew has to deal with a horde made of ghosts and trolls in Chapter 13. The trolls are individually easy to kill, but only about half the crew of six is available to do so, and more just keep coming. Lalli has to deal with a stronger ghost that Reynir's new protection runes are unable to keep away, while Reynir himself has to stay hidden along with Tuuri because being around trolls is much more dangerous for them than for everyone else.
Web Original
- Destroy the Godmodder: Frequently used, It's worth noting that the actual Zerg were summoned in both 1 and 2.
- Google used to have an Easter egg that occurs when searching literally the name of this trope, where you'd have to prevent the Os from the Google logo from destroying the search results by clicking on them until it's too late. When the Os have destroyed all search results, they all gather to form a GG, which likely stands for GooGle. This Easter egg was later removed.
- GameFAQs: The contests at times face this when dealing with outside rallies, that at times only fail when instead of sheer numbers the "invaders" resort to vote stuffing. Twice it favored Blizzard — Star Craft had a great run in a games contest before bowing down to Super Smash Bros. Melee, Diablo reached the semifinals of Got Villains before Ganondorf proved too much — and the 2013 contest reached Hostile Show Takeover by a Reddit swarm interested in getting a title for League of Legends character Draven (on a lesser note, another games contest was won by Undertale due to the game's fans rallying for it, while also featuring Smash Bros fans rallying for Melee and making it beat Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VII). By the next contest in 2018, the site's own made sure to show Draven was nothing without his legion of trolls by anti-voting him to oblivion in his only match.
- Hamster's Paradise: The Harmsters would evolve with this strategy in mind as they frequently reproduce in large numbers and mature quickly as a way of coping with a high mortality rate. This led to them placing no value on the lives of their fellows or even developing medicine since they could be easily replaced. One of their civilizations, the Bruteriders, would also use this as their primary military strategy when they begin their goal of global conquest, just overwhelm the enemy with swarms of soldiers, projectiles and Brutes once their rakatusks bring down the fortress walls. This served them well until they go against the calculating and technologically advanced Rockcookers, these Harmsters eschewed mindless horde tactics in favor of complex plans and strategies and quickly learn to target the rakatusks with artillery before they get close enough to do any damage, completely foiling the Bruteriders who had become reliant on this method and fall apart when one artillery strike fatally injures their leader.
- Open Blue: This is the primary tactic of the Yamani Empire. The Zerg Rush, combined with bushido.
- Serina:
- Dogbeast tribbetheres, which lack complex coordinative behavior, take down their prey by mobbing it and biting to death en masse.
- Viridescent sawjaws are only two feet tall at most, but attack in packs of up to or over a hundred animals to take down prey ten times their size or more.
- Waterhorse porplets defend against their main predator, the arctic snagglejaw, by migrating in such numbers that it's impossible for their predators to take all of them.
- Firefinches will mob potential threats to their nests in flocks of more than two hundred birds. The fanged firefinch is particularly nasty because it'll attack just about anything, even the massive cygnosaurs, to the point that they've inadvertently given a fighting chance to plants that would otherwise be devoured by grazers.
- The tyrant cygnosaurs of the Sanctuary Crater are the biggest (semi-)terrestrial animals to ever live, overtopping their already immense ancestors and matching the biggest Earth sauropods, and between that and their extremely aggressive behavior they are far too much for any surviving predator to take on... or, at least, to do so alone. The magnificent manticore is a raptor-like sawjaw that normally hunts smaller prey using agility and coordinated small groups; however, during drought periods when their regular prey dies off or migrates outside the main crater, they gather in huge groups that can number a hundred and fifty or more at once and head inwards, towards the swamps and lake where the tyrant cygnosaur lives. These groups mob the giants all at once, favoring individuals already wounded in their constant battles over territory, distracting them with constant darting attacks while some leap on their back to bite at their neck. These battles can last for days, until either the cygnosaur emerges victorious or the giant pack of tinier hunters manages to kill it through sheer attrition.
- The Tyrannosaur Chronicles: Whiro's minions are a swarm of mosquitos and sand flies that use this technique.
Western Animation
- Ben 10: Alien Force: An Evil vs. Evil example; Vilgax and Albedo's alliance breaks down once they've stripped Ben of the Omnitrix. Albedo has the Ultimatrix, and with it, an Evolution Power-Up, while Vilgax has thousands of Bioids synchronized to the Omnitrix. Albedo as Ultimate Humungousaur is able to take down dozens of Humungousaur clones, but eventually gets overwhelmed as more and more Bioids join up to dogpile him.
- Futurama: This is Zapp Brannigan's preferred (and pretty much only) tactic. He once defeated an army of Killbots by sending "wave after wave" of his own men against them until they filled their pre-set "kill limit" and stopped.
Zapp: Now, like all great plans, my strategy is so simple an idiot could've devised it. On my command, all ships will line up and file directly into the alien death cannons, clogging them with wreckage.
- Generator Rex: This is the primary strategy of the villain No-Face, who telepathically directs all of the EVOs at strategic points to overwhelm opponents who are attempting to escape.
- The Legend of Korra: Often pulled by the chi-blockers. An individual chi blocker is a competent and dangerous opponent even for main characters. They're skilled enough to actually win in one-on-one fights against the series' main character. A highly coordinated rush on top of that is basically overkill for most enemies.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Although individual changelings aren't particularly effective or dangerous enemies, they win their invasion of Canterlot by overwhelming the city's defenders and the main characters with an endless wave of bodies.
- The Powerpuff Girls (1998): In "Twisted Sister", the girls get rushed by a mob of prisoners that Bunny inadvertently set free, and they're powerless to do anything about it until Bunny swoops in to save the day.
- Richie Rich: Irona faces a group of inferior impostors all charging at her at once and she simply converts her lower body into a large roller and flattens all her attackers at once.
- Star Trek: Lower Decks provides a rare heroic example in the season 3 finale when every single California-Class ship in the fleet shows up to save the Cerritos from the USS Aledo and subject it to a Death of a Thousand Cuts. Having 31 opponents of identical threat level leaves its AI completely overwhelmed and unable to pick out a target to fire back on, only getting off a single easily countered shot before it's finally destroyed.
- The Transformers: In the episode "War Dawn", the Aerialbots are sent back in time and witness one of the first ever attacks launched by the Decepticons under Megatron. He initially masquerades as a trader, seeking a place to store his wares carried by countless trucks. When dock worker Orion Pax helpfully explains that the warehouses are all filled with Energon, the trucks and their cargo transform into Decepticon warriors and launch their attack, with Orion himself being shot by Megatron. The gigantic Guardian Robots arrive to fight them, but the sheer weight of numbers means that they can't be everywhere at once and one is even seen being downed when its head is blown off under a hail of fire.
- The Venture Bros.:
- A Zerg Rush gives the Monarch's Mooks a rare and costly victory over Brock Samson. It's possible because they're in the middle of partying and getting tattoos, which increases their morale enough to just dog pile him while he's distracted.
- They later use the same tactic to bring down Guild Wasps; fighter jets piloted by Guild of Calamitous Intent Elite Mooks. They just pile on to force the Wasps to crash, and, in at least one instance, suicide dive into the engines.
- Wakfu: The Rush is the favorite pastime of the Shushus, those who invoke it are pitted against 666 low-level Shushus until they fall. When the heroes face it, they also have the added challenge of fighting Anathar.
- Winx Club: The Trix's strategy when laying a massive invasion then siege on Magix using the Army of Decay at the end of season one after they manage to steal the Dragon's Flame. This is possible due to the Army of Decay's sheer numbers and made worse by the fact that any injury brought upon the monsters of Decay will be in their favor — they can regenerate from mere cuts to whole limbs and, if cut in half, they would disintegrate in order to reform themselves into two monsters. Plus, there were so many of them at the start that the Army is shown to overwhelm the entirety alumni of Alfea, Cloud Tower, and Red Fountain. The only way to get rid of them is by injuring them so many times they end up unable to reform. Alternatively, you can set them on fire, arguably magical fire only, which is kind of a bluff since the only known fairy with fire powers is Bloom and she, well, is the last of her kind. Is it even necessary to say that at that point she had lost those very same fire powers?
