Conservation Of Ninjutsu / Webcomics

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• The Adventures of Dr. McNinja has applied this trope to every fight the title character's been in (except for the Raptor Banditos, who turned out not to be villains), even going so far as to explicitly reference it on several occasions.
  • One of the straightest examples is with pirates in "So what IS a McNinja?" The Doctor is One-Man-Armying his way through the pirates, until their captain tells them to stand down and let him do the fighting. Then he proceeds to put up a fight and toss the Doctor overboard. It's also Rank Scales with Asskicking, but aside from the present trope, it's pretty surprising since pirates are supposed to be no match for ninjas for obvious reasons.
  • The trope is also Invoked by a villain later on who arranged for Dr. McNinja to be cloned hundreds of times, so instead of the Doc being one man fighting his army of mooks, said villain would be one man fighting an army of McNinjas, thereby making the latter almost powerless.
  • Which Dr. McNinja then counters: he rips off his sleeves and uses them to fashion a bandana so that his appearance is unique from that of his numerous clones, and then uses Enemy Mine and Buddy Cop Show cliches and joins up with Rayner against the clones, invoking Back-to-Back Badasses, thereby making them both strong. Rayner doesn't want to team up with his enemy, but since rejecting help means rejecting The Power of Friendship, he becomes powerless against the clones when he doesn't allow McNinja to help him. Thus they both defeat all the clones, which means McNinja is at full power again.
• The Bob and George adaptation of Mega Man 5 had Bob clone every Robot Master from the first four games dozens of times to overwhelm Mega Man and friends. However, they're so weak as to have several taken one from a single charge shot. It could be handwaved by Bob using Dr. Wily's Mook Maker to spawn them rapid-fire and sacrificing quality over quantity.
• Lampshaded in Captain SNES: The Game Masta in a guest comic◊ showing various characters' respective ideas of heaven and hell. In Edge's heaven, he is surrounded by 9 obviously lovestruck Rydias. Edge acknowledges the readers knowledge that this would probobly be too much for one person, before stating "I have 3 words for you. Inverse. Ninja. Law."
• In Dragon Mango, Peaches comments on how much easier it was to fight a bunch, and Bleu Berry explains as a scientific principle. They call it the "Snow Dancer Syndrome."
• Dreamkeepers: One of the primary obstacles faced by the invading Nightmares to their conquest of the Dreamworld is that, as they invade the Dreamworld, it starts to resist them. The more and more powerful Nightmares manifest in the Dreamworld, the harder it becomes for new Nightmares to manifest. And conversely, as Nightmares are banished, it becomes easier for new ones to enter.
• Justified in Fans! when Team Alpha faces the golems of the Order of the Dragon. The larger the summoned army, the more the Order members have to spread their power among the individual units, resulting in a frightening number of mooks that all drop with one hit.
• Girl Genius used it in all ways.
  • Dr. Beetle tried to pull this as he "put all his eggs in one basket" with one huge clank Mr. Tock and didn't even call for reinforcements immediately. This didn't work for very long.
  • Gil goes out alone, likely in full knowledge of this trope, to face off against an army of invading clanks. Naturally, he destroys some and forces surrender from the rest. The most hilarious portion of this sequence is that the invading army's general realizes what's going on and attempts to have Gil shot before he can do anything.
    • He did have a really powerful weapon Magnificent Deathray. It is elsewhere established that most of the crazy inventors who try to face off against armies with their lone death ray tend to meet a predictable end.
  • Later two airships full of Wulfenbach Stealth Fighters were chasing the Vespiary Squad. They even managed to kill or wound most of this crack team, but ran into a few Jäger generals and a Smoke Knight who in turn massacred them and made it look insultingly easy.
  • The Heterodyne monster held by the Corbettite order, one it escapes. The entire order of badass monks who have been confiscating and hiding weapons for hundreds of years, the airship fleet of the current claimant to the Storm King throne, and the main characters together can barely do anything until Agatha figures out its weakpoint.
• Invoked, lampshaded, discussed, and finally both justified and played straight by Vehemence in Grrl Power.
  • Invoked by Vehemence personally, who stays out of the fight until every other super villain is beaten.
  • Lampshaded on his behalf by Sydney, who realizes that as the last villain standing and one who's refused to fight before now, and who just beat down several of his team-mates so that he could fight alone, he's probably the toughest and will take a lot to beat, with her loudly calling "inverse ninja!" on it.
  • It's then discussed when Maxima tries to invoke reality on Sydney's assumption, with Sydney countering by pointing out "what's worse, one hundred storm troopers or one Darth Vader?"
  • Finally played straight and justified when it's revealed Vehemence draws his power from vehemic energy...also known as violence in general, and he can get it just by watching. So showing up to a superhero fight and hanging around until the very end just makes him even more powerful and harder to beat by the time the heroes are done with everyone else.
• Learning with Manga! FGO: The Mouse Casters duplicate themselves into an army and attack Mash. Mash defeats them off screen and comments that it doesn't matter how many there are because they are weak.
• The Order of the Stick does this as well, coincidentally on the same day as the first Dr. McNinja strip referenced above.
  You wanna fight? There's only one ninja left, and that means I'm death incarnate!
  • Applied straight here: after a fight between Roy and vampire Durkon that required numerous strips with a partial victory by Roy and vampire Durkon forced to protect himself behind a shield, then a whole squad of vampires created from the bodies of the clerics of the Creed of Stone is destroyed quickly, with Roy killing three of them in three hits. Justified by the fact that Durkon is a high level cleric, while nothing is known about the level of the clerics of the Creed of Stone.
• The page image comes from a scene from Sam & Fuzzy, where Mr. Blank takes on the mook legions of Mr. Black. Blank and Black are both blankfaces, elite ninja assassins, while the mooks are... well, they're mooks. As Mister Blank puts it about two minutes later: "Looks like I might have to change my name to Mr. Red!"
• In Schlock Mercenary Book 13 the first one of the Gavs to turn into a Super-Soldier, "Binnie", slaughters two Toughs and a lab full of civilians before he's taken down, while all the subsequent Super Soldier Gavs are killed off quickly. Justified in that Binnie had a few days in quarantine to grow weapons and boosts and he took Tagon's Toughs by surprise, and by the time the other Gavs started turning the Toughs were ready for it with close air support.
• Sluggy Freelance: In "The Sci-fi Adventure", the spaceship Torg and Riff are on is attacked by a group of xenomorph-style aliens in space. The crewmen shoot them easily in zero gravity outside the ship (when there are a lot of them), but one of them manages to infect one of the humans, causing one more alien to burst out of him inside the ship and go on a rampage. She starts killing crew members effortlessly by herself, until only Riff and Torg are left, at which point they find some big guns and shoot her down.
• It's one of 14 Things That Never Happen in Real Life◊.

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