History Main / MillionMookMarch

* ''{{Animaniacs}}'' had one of these. Episode: 'King Yakko', a thinly disguised parody of ''DuckSoup'' with Yakko in the Groucho Marx role. He and his siblings search for the invading army, until it's pointed out. Yakko ends up seeing one of these. [[BreakingTheFourthWall He figures it'd take a commercial break to come up with a viable battle plan.]]

* warhammer40000 Imperial Guard forces are usually shown in this way in their codex books, considering the Imperium of Man is TheEmpire of a million worlds, the amount of forces marching can literally go up to the horizon.

* Warhammer40000 Imperial Guard forces are usually shown in this way in their codex books, considering the Imperium of Man is TheEmpire of a million worlds, the amount of forces marching can literally go up to the horizon.

You've got a massive army at your disposal, but people need to see its size, not only to show off your power, but to hurt morale of anyone who stands against you. So you have them march, either in a straight line that takes all day, or massive formations that cover even the largest fields. Of course, TheEmpire can be expected to often show this off.

You've got a massive army at your disposal, but people need to see its size, not only to show off your power, but to hurt morale of anyone who stands against you. So you have them march, either in a straight line that takes all day, or massive formations that cover even the largest fields.

Of course it's important that they [[BadassArmy actually fight well]], and many {{Evil Overlord}}s heed that advice. Also, doesn't work if the heroes are using a bottleneck, like a narrow bridge. [[ThreeHundred Or, god forbid, a thin path between the mountain and the sea...]]

The logistics of providing food and toilet facilities for such a huge army are usually [[EasyLogistics ignored]] or {{Hand Wave}}d.

* [[{{Gorillaz}}Jamie]] [[TankGirl Howlett's]] music video ''Monkey Bee'' is a remix of a song from his ''Monkey: Journey To The West'' album. As expected, it is loosely based on ''JourneyToTheWest''. At the end of the video, the Monkey King is faced with a massive amry of the undead, resulting in a BolivianArmyEnding. The video can be seen [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdZjO-i_vxg here]].

-->--'''Sun Tzu''', ''TheArtOfWar''

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/US_Military_parade_at_the_Imperial_Palace_Plaza.JPG

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http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/US_Military_parade_at_the_Imperial_Palace_Plaza.JPG

TruthInTelevision, going back to most ancient armies. For the vehicular examples, try FlauntingYourFleets.

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* Military Parades, most famously, the Red Army. China, India and Russia continue to mount the largest military parades in the world.
** North Korea [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMLtkp4AFkc recently had one]] to commemorate the rise of [[OverlordJr Kim Jong Un]].
* Particularly Napoleonic French army doctrine, since other armies formed into lines to maximise firepower. When your three man deep line saw a mass of men in column marching relentlessly at you, and nothing you could do with your volleys would seem to do more than dent the outer edges of that gigantic column, it would understandably flee. Only the British seemed immune to this effect, if only because they were more scared of their sergeants and brutal discipline than of the columns of doom.
* James Oglethorpe used a forest that hid where his army had come from and where it was going, and marched a small army in a circle to make it look much bigger.
** Rommel succeeded in pulling off the same "unending loop" trick, without the benefit of forest cover and with ''[[TankGoodness tanks]]''.
** Improved upon, perhaps by others in the same desert, who used trucks disguised as tanks, tanks disguised as trucks, the truck and tank disguises left behind in the front line where they would be seen, trucks pulling trailers that left the tracks of tanks, fake airfields with fake aircraft (sometimes bombed with fake bombs), fake railroads and railheads 100 miles south of the real railheads, ammo, water and fuel dumps that were sometimes fake covering the real ones. All this constructed to a realistic timetable that indicated an attack several weeks later than the actual attack. Job done. Nazis lose.
** The Soviets used this trick with [[UpToEleven strategic bombers]] during their military parades in the 1950s, decieving American observers and creating the myth of the Bomber Gap. Believing their long-range bomber fleet to be massively inferior to the Soviet one, the Americans promptly invested as much as they could in research and production of [=ICBMs=]. Yes, much of the Cold War arms race was due to this ploy.
** The trick is OlderThanFeudalism. Military manuals written in Greece before the birth of Alexander the Great already feature passages detailing how to make your army look bigger than it is. Ploys include the "unending loop" as well as alternating spears to make formations seem twice as wide, marching in single file to make columns stretch endlessly, marching in hollow formations using dust clouds to hide true numbers, and dressing up women as soldiers [[ValuesDissonance ("though you should never allow them to throw missiles, for a woman immediately betrays her sex when she tries to throw")]].
* The Roman Empire. Called 'triumphs', victorious generals and emperors would process from the Field of Mars past shrines and crowds of roaring plebeians toward Rome's great Temple of Jupiter. Toga-clad senators and the families of prominent patricians followed ahead of conquering ranks of legionaries. Bulls were sacrificed, laurel wreaths donned. Chariots bore the plundered loot of subjugated tribes and captured barbarians were yanked along in chains. Some of the slaves had instructions to mutter "memento mori" ("remember you are mortal") to their captors ? an ironic note in a propaganda play designed to bind the Roman public to its leaders.
* The Trooping of the Colour can look suspiciously like this.
* This tactic has also been recorded in TheBible - from an initial standing army of 32,000 men, Gideon selected 300 men and used this tactic against a much larger Midianite-Amalek combined force.

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* ReBoot's pilot episode has Megabyte's mooks marching across the underground lair. They aren't going anywhere, but it looks awesome and is only meant to intimidate Bob.

* The Roman Empire was where these parades began. Called 'triumphs', victorious generals and emperors would process from the Field of Mars past shrines and crowds of roaring plebeians toward Rome's great Temple of Jupiter. Toga-clad senators and the families of prominent patricians followed ahead of conquering ranks of legionaries. Bulls were sacrificed, laurel wreaths donned. Chariots bore the plundered loot of subjugated tribes and captured barbarians were yanked along in chains. Some of the slaves had instructions to mutter "memento mori" ("remember you are mortal") to their captors ? an ironic note in a propaganda play designed to bind the Roman public to its leaders.

TruthInTelevision, going back to most ancient armies.

* This tactic has also been recorded in TheBible - from an initial standing army of 32,000 men, Gideon was instructed by God to select 300 men and used this tactic against a much larger Midianite-Amalek combined force.

** NorthKorea [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMLtkp4AFkc recently had one]] to commemorate the rise of [[OverlordJr Kim Jong Un]].

* Military Parades, most famously, the Red Army. China, India and Russia continue to mount the largest military parades in the world.

* OrderOfTheStick makes use of this trope. //A more specific example would be appreciated, of course.

* Do I ''really'' need to spell out which webcomic would use this trope, just as it uses [[TropeOverdosed so many other tropes]]?
** [[OrderOfTheStick Yes.]]

* In ''TheWheelOfTime'' The Dragon Reborn has armies numbering in the hundreds of thousands. In The path Of Daggers, one character thinks to himself that he can remember when 5000 men was a large army, before the coming of the Dragon.

* In ''TheWheelOfTime'' The Dragon Reborn has armies numbering in the tens of millions. In The path Of Daggers, one character thinks to himself that he can remember when 5000 men was a large army, before the coming of the Dragon.

** In one of the last scenes of ''AttackOfTheClones'', where the clone army is shown marching in formation on Coruscant for shits and giggles.