A Ragtag Bunch of Misfits is pulled together on emergency to fulfill some grand goal. They succeed. And then realize that they are quite good at working with each other and can stay a team for future crises to come.
In comic books, this is one of the classic superhero team origins. First, the heroes each respond to the crisis individually, and once they've converged on a single location, realize they could work better as a group than alone.
Compare Newcomer Saves the Day, where an established team realizes that a rookie will make a great addition to their group. Contrast The Fellowship Has Ended and We Were Your Team.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- One Piece: The Straw Hat Grand Fleet is formed by seven powerful pirate leaders who came to respect and honor Captain Luffy and the rest of the Straw Hat pirates when the Straw Hats saved them from Pirate Warlord Doflamingo's powerful crew and Luffy personally defeated Doflamingo. When Luffy tells them he doesn't want them and they should do what they like, they decide to serve him willingly anyway. Luffy agrees to the compromise of them coming to each others aide if one is in danger.
Comic Books
- The Avengers:
- The founding Avengers realized they work well together after thwarting a scheme by Loki, the Norse god of mischief.
- After Avengers Dissassembled, the New Avengers were formed under the same circumstances (working together to fight a mass jailbreak of supervillains).
- Batgirl: Year One: Inverted, where a team-up between Barbara and Black Canary ends with the following dialogue:
Black Canary: Promise me we won't make these team-ups a regular thing.
Batgirl: Done. - Justice League of America: This is one of the classic superhero team origins. The original Justice League realized they worked well together after fending off giant alien monsters.
Films — Animation
- The Great Mouse Detective: After Rattigan is defeated, Dawson starts to leave to go look for lodging. Basil is trying to tell him to stay when there's a knock on the door. She requests Basil's help and he introduces Dawson as "[his] trusted associate, with whom [he does] all of [his] cases". The doctor smiles fondly and doesn't contradict him. Cue the credits.
Films — Live-Action
- Casablanca:
Rick: Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: After the Big Bad is defeated, Captain Nemo suggests that they stay together.
"I have long hidden away from the world, now I wish to see it anew as the century turns. You're all welcome to join me."
Literature
- Anti-Magic Academy: The 35th Test Platoon: Despite being dysfunctional at first glance, with some members ridiculously skilled in one area and hopeless at the rest, the Platoon girls' talents mesh really well with each other.
- My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, as I Expected: Although each member has their own skills (Hachiman logically and philosophically, Yui socially and emotionally, and Yukino balancing them, excelling in terms of realistic longview), and tend to prefer to use their own methods to solve the problem, whenever the trio works united, they always get the best results.
Live-Action TV
- Leverage: In the pilot, the crew, four thieves who worked alone before this job and one honest man running them, find they had a lot of fun working with others and learning new skills. Best seen in the last minutes of the episode.
Toys
- American Girls Collection: When Emily Bennet ends up having to perform her flutophone in public, Molly and her friends cover her mistakes by joining her as a band.
Video Games
- Freedom Force Versus the Third Reich: Minute Man suggests that Red Oktober join the Freedom Force after helping them beat Nuklear Winter. She refuses.
- Midnight Suns: Despite (or perhaps because of) his complicated history with Blade, the two actually synergize quite well when in the same team, with Blade having more means of inflicting Bleed on enemies while Morbius has more buffs against Bleeding enemies.
- Nintendo Wars: In Advance Wars: Dual Strike, due to an Enemy Mine situation, Sonja and Lash.
Lash: Tee hee hee! I'm going to break everything!
Sonja: I don't understand why we work so well together... - Wild ARMs 3: This is, after the vignettes that tell everyone's backstories, the way the party forms. After the initial mission together, three of them are quite happy to split up again, while the fourth (who's the Wide-Eyed Idealist) is anxious to stick together.
- XCOM 2: Legacy Ops: After the fall of the original XCOM organization, Central Officer Bradford hooks up with a small group of random survivors and scavengers who are desperately trying to stay one step ahead of Advent and live off the land. As the campaign progresses, the group collectively realizes that they actually compliment each other really well, and they gradually go from simply surviving to actively thriving - and from desperately avoiding the alien forces to actively picking fights with them, Good Feels Good style.
Webcomics
- Guilded Age: The band of adventurers, seen at the beginning of each chapter in Flash Forwards, finally come together (after a false start that included a Jerkass Warrior Poet) at the end of Chapter 6, having successfully rescued one of their own.
Syr'Nj: Maybe we're all better off with each other than without [...] Friendship doesn't always mean we'll agree. But we don't have to see eye to eye to stand shoulder to shoulder.
Web Animation
- Helluva Boss: After discovering C.H.E.R.U.B. also have a vendetta with I.M.P., D.H.O.R.K.S. propose a team up. While they have made advancements in tracking and resisting I.M.P., their resources only work with someone the Cherubs' size. While C.H.E.R.U.B. still loses to I.M.P., their use of D.H.O.R.K.S.' technology allows them to be a much more serious threat to them than either group were on their own. Their cameo in the following episode suggests they have decided to remain allied.
Western Animation
- Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers: In the Five-Episode Pilot, the team is pulled together when the titular chipmunks are on a mission to recover a stolen ruby, but end up foiling a high level robbery. Afterwards, Monty, Zipper, and Gadget intend to leave, but when a new mystery begins, they decide to stick together.
- Cyberchase: While they do succeed at missions where they're split up (like in the first episode, when each member answered The Call individually), the Squad is at their best when they're working together. And, surprisingly, with little drama.
- Dinotrux: In the first episode, all of the various species are extremely resistant to Ty's radical idea that different species can work together until Ty accidentally throws one of them into a tar pit and everyone quickly uses their own individual abilities to save him by building a bridge to reach him and pull him out. The awe at what they just achieved is what motivates them to stay together for the rest of the series.
- Justice League:
- J'onn calls upon six other superheroes and heroines to defend Earth against the Imperium, but when the enemy is defeated, they decide to make the arrangement permanent, since they work well together.
- Ironically, throughout Superman: The Animated Series and The New Batman Adventures, whenever the Man of Steel and the Caped Crusader have to work with each other, they both end up dissatisfied and recoil from the idea of permanent cooperation.
- Batman lampshades this at the end of the first episode and never gets around to becoming an official member of the League (he just tells them to call him when they need him). This turns out to be very useful in the climax four seasons later.
