All Your Base Are Belong to Us

Player 1: Dude, where are you?
Player 2: im in ur base, killing ur d00dz

— Overheard during a game of StarCraft

Ah, the Heroes "R" Us HQ. For some heroes, it's the place they eat, sleep, and generally live their lives; for others, it's a great place to kick back, relax, and have wacky hijinks with their friends while on downtime; and for everyone, it's the perfect place to run to after a failed mission, or at least an especially difficult one. After all, you gotta have a place for your heroes' R&R, and what better place than your very safe and secure Home Base, right?

Cue explosions, warning klaxons, and many "This Is Not a Drill" announcements. Somebody Set Up Us the Bomb, indeed.

For shows featuring a Super Hero team, a military group, a secret service, or anything else that requires a Mission Control to operate, an attack on their headquarters is a great way to increase drama and tension. When an ordinary mission is botched, the heroes still have someplace to return, lick their wounds, and plan their next encounter; but if they lose their homebase? Big morale crusher right there. Not only have they lost a safe haven and one of their biggest resources, but for many heroes, their very home as well.

If it gets destroyed while the heroes are out (or worse, despite their best efforts), have fun Watching Troy Burn.

Often the result of and overlaps with War Comes Home, when a conflict erupts to the point that it hits the homeland of the hero(es) resulting in the war becoming personal and the losses even more painful. This situation is when The Mole frequently surfaces. You can also expect the story's supporting characters to have their own moments, typically tied into their position — the agency's weapons guy will break out the big gun, the university physics professor will cobble together a death ray while the math teacher calculates firing solutions, the magical gardener will animate the topiary animals, etc.

Naturally, this is a great excuse to Trash the Set. If the attack succeeds and the base falls, it could create a Shocking Defeat Legacy. Bonus points if the base is taken over by a Nazi-esque regime, resulting in a Day of the Jackboot. Compare with "Die Hard" on an X, where at least one character is left to fight back after the initial attack, win or lose. See also The Siege, Protect This House. When the heroes pull this on the villain, it's Storming the Castle. If the destruction is upgraded to the entire city or country, this may be a Throwaway Country. Hub Under Attack is a gaming-specific Sister Trope where a Hub Level in a game is attacked.

Often occurs at the beginning of videogames where you must fight Back from the Brink.

If you are looking for a trope related to the phrase "All Your Base Are Belong To Us", from Zero Wing, see Good Bad Translation, "Blind Idiot" Translation, Video Game Memes, or Intentional Engrish for Funny.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Happens rather often in the Mazinger saga, since several of the plans by the Big Bad involve attacking the Photoatomic Institute. The Photoatomic Research Institute from Mazinger Z, the Fortress of Science of Great Mazinger and the Space Science Lab from UFO Robo Grendizer are preferred attack targets and often they get severely damaged, especially the first one. The worst damage the Institute suffered happened in episode 34 from Mazinger Z, when Genocyder F9 turned the place into smoking ruins. Great Mazinger's HQ was not destroyed in the anime, but in one of the manga versions it was completely obliterated. The heroes were driven out of it and were forced to run away and lie low for a while.
  • Mazinkaiser also features at least four attacks on the Institute, which is finally destroyed in the General of Darkness movie.
• Occurs in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS during the two-parter "That Day, Riot Force Six". It ended with their base in ruins and Mission Control having to move somewhere else for the final battle.
• Happens in Full Metal Panic!'s first season, during the last episodes when the villain takes full control of the Tuatha de Danaan.
  • In the yet unadapted novel Tsuzuku On My Own most (presumable, all) Mythril bases get thoroughly trashed by Amalgam forces with their biggest and meanest armslaves. Lots of people were killed and Danaan crew had to evacuate the Merida base in a hurry, without completing repairs and resupply of their sub. With Sosuke off-site, once again trying to save Kaname from kidnapping attempts and, now, Leo's advances. He fails. Unsurprisingly, the book ends on the biggest cliffhanger in the series.
• From the anime adaptations of Sakura Wars:
  • The Flower Division loses the Imperial Theater in this manner near the end of the 26-episode TV series thanks to Aoi Satan and his cohorts.
  • In Sakura Wars: The Movie, Douglas-Stewart has the Imperial Japanese Army take over the Imperial Theater after Ikki Yoneda is captured. Fortunately, it doesn't last long thanks to Yokihiko Ota's help.
• In Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040, the Knight Sabers are driven out of their headquarters when Big Bad Galatea makes the Boomers begin the Robot War.
• Gundam
  • Happens in Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz, in which the villains take over the Presidential Palace / Elaborate Underground Base. The protagonist sends a visual transmission to the villains, asking if the base's armour works, right before firing his BFG to open the base.
  • This also happens twice in the original Mobile Suit Gundam: With Ranba Ral's infantry raid on the White Base, and later with the Zeon attack on The Federation's Elaborate Underground Base.
  • Also happens during the second season of Mobile Suit Gundam 00. As Celestial Being is getting resupplied at an asteroid base, Manchurian Agent Anew Returner exposes the base's location to the A-LAWS, resulting in the entire place getting blown up.
  • The series finale of Gundam Build Divers Re:RISE. Alus, realising the Divers from GBN would continue to interfere with his plans as another group of invaders, angrily uploads himself and his remaining army into GBN to destroy it and all of the Divers so that no one will ever get in his way ever again. However, it's all part of the BUILD DiVERS' Batman Gambit as the moment he arrives, a huge number of Divers outnumbering his forces are revealed to be lying in wait for him.
• Happens in the Super Robot Wars: Original Generation OVA (later gets carried over to OG Gaiden). An exhibition of new mecha series...nothing could go wrong with that. Except that those new mecha series got their AIs rigged on their own and goes berserk without warning. And the result was lots of casualties, the heroes being too late to prevent that, and five of the main characters captured. OG Gaiden adds up with the sudden kidnapping of one civilian in the middle of chaos. Getting their base attacked happens at least once per game throughout the entire series, if for no other reason than the fact that it happens so darn much in other anime series (such as the ones included in those games).
• A late episode of Yes! Pretty Cure 5 featured NutsHouse, the store that serves as Pretty Cure's headquarters (and Coco, Nuts, and Milk's home), being turned into a Kowainaa.
• In Go! Princess Pretty Cure, The final battle for the Princess Pretty Cure team begins when the Dys Dark army led by Dyspear invaded and took over Noble Academy (including the girls' dorms, where the Princess Pretty Cure team are living) by engulfing it with vines.
• Late in Tokyo Mew Mew, Quiche kidnaps Ichigo and torments her with a vision of his fellow Quirky Miniboss Squad members attacking her friends at Cafe Mew Mew. After Ao no Kishi bails her out and they run back to base, it turns out to be true.
• Midway through My-Otome, Garderobe is preparing to graduate/promote its new Otomes, and at the same time celebrate the grand re-opening of Mashiro's newly-reconstructed castle. Of course, they weren't counting on Schwarz spies being involved in the reconstruction effort, or on the castle being converted into a Slave-summoning superweapon. Things go rapidly downhill from there as Nagi assumes control of Garderobe, and Mashiro is run out of town.
• Happens twice in Neon Genesis Evangelion:
  • The attack of Zeruel, who makes it to Central Dogma and gets close enough to stare the bridge crew in the face before Shinji's Foe-Tossing Charge; and, of course, the assault of the JSSDF from End of Evangelion.
  • Iruel pretty much took over Nerv's computer system and set the base to self-destruct before Ritsuko stops it with the single, free, uninfected MAGI system.
• EI-15 in GaoGaiGar was produced by a programmer who didn't get picked to operate the heroes' base. As a Zonder, he infected the base computer itself, taking over all the systems. It took a double Big Damn Heroes moment by Volfogg infiltrating from outside while Entouji, GGG's main programmer, tries to retake the system from the computer end. On its way out, the Zonder assimilated several spare GaoGaiGar parts, including some that let it mimic and counter GaoGaiGar's moves.
  • And then there's the time seven of the Primevals infiltrated the GGG's Orbit Base through a 0.02mm hole in their force field.
• Voltron: The Castle of Lions comes under attack multiple times in the course of the series.
• Happens in Hellsing when the Valentine brothers, Jan and Luke, attack Hellsing HQ with their squad of ghouls. They kill most of the mooks, but Alucard and Walter dispatch them quite easily. It is then found out that they were members of an army of Nazi vampires who are planning to start World War 3 for fun. And further down the line, it's revealed that Walter was the one who tipped them off.
  • Happens again with Zorin leading an attack on HQ when the Nazis arrive in London. This attack was far more successful, leaving the headquarters in ruins and bringing the Hellsing organization down to three members before being defeated.
• Happens to the Silvana in Last Exile for a while.
• In Gatchaman, Galactor finally manages to destroy the heroes' base in episodes 91 and 92. The American Battle of the Planets had the two-part "Invasion of Space Center" as a revamp of those episodes. However, since the show had added 7-Zark-7, they had to explain why the robot wasn't destroyed or even threatened by separating Center Neptune into two parts: Space Center and Research Center.
• In Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, corrupt government officials order the attack on Section 9 headquarters by using Umibozu commandos. Being warned of the attack in advance, the Major prepares for a fake defense and blows up most of the facilities to hide their escape.
• The original Getter Robo series had the lab destroyed by the Dinosaur Empire just before the final episode.
• Subverted in Naruto:
  • The Orochimaru/Sunagakure attack on Konohagakure during the Chunin Exams arc. After fending off these enemies, the residents of Konohagakure simply rebuild.
  • Pain's attack on Konohagakure in which he uses his jutsu to wipe the village off the face of the planet. Due to a Deus ex Machina, no one (except Tsunade) is seriously injured and...they simply rebuild again.
• In Part 3 of the five-part finale of Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, Dreamland, Kirby's home country, gets attacked by fleets of Destroyer ships sent by Emperor Nightmare and his company, Holy Nightmare Co./Nightmare Enterprises.
• Both Gravion and Godannar had episodes where a piece of a destroyed Robeast hitched a ride on the heroes' mecha and started to grow and/or multiply inside their base.
• In one of the rare moments in Transformers: Armada where he wasn't holding the Idiot Ball or having the Autobots' newest gimmick ruin his plans, Thrust managed to draw the Autobots out to the battlefield, see that none of them had the Requiem Blaster, and then invade the now-unguarded Autobot base to steal the blaster while leaving Starscream as sacrificial decoy. It worked, but Starscream wasn't happy about it.
• Fairy Tail's guild building can't seem to last 2 arcs without getting wrecked or otherwise lost. To date, it was wrecked during the night by Gajeel and later totally demolished during the fighting of the Phantom Lord arc which was the 2nd arc, the rebuilt version was warped into Edolas two arcs later though later restored, and almost immediately afterwards the key members leave for a mission and the building is repossessed while they were away as the weaker members left behind couldn't keep the guild out of debt. It remains to be seen if they will ever get the old building back.
  • They do get it back after the Grand Magic Games, and as per usual it's destroyed again two arcs later in the Tartarus arc when a controlled Elfman brings a bomb back with him, destroying it (Cana saves everyone by sealing them in cards and having the 3 Exceeds carry them to safety). Assuming they rebuild it again, it will probably get destroyed again 2 arcs later.
  • During the Grand Finale, the whole town gets occupied by the Albareth Empire, with Emperor Spriggan (aka Zeref) himself taking up residence in the guild hall, forcing the heroes to have to fight their way into their own home.
• Attack on Titan: The overall goal of the Titans, though they're more interested in devouring the humans than the base itself. A more specific instance occurs when Titans occupy the Garrison HQ during the Battle of Trost, forcing the troops to attempt to retake it so that they can refill their 3D maneuver gear gas and keep fighting.
• Black Butler: At the climax of the Circus Arc, the Noah's Ark troupe attack Phantomhive Manor and are subsequently curb-stomped by the servant trio.
• In High School D×D, Kateria Leviathan and her forces from the Khaos Brigade launch an assault on Kuoh Academy during the peace conference between the Three Factions.
• Senki Zesshō Symphogear:
  • The end of the first season has Finé, after her identity is exposed, launch an attack upon the Disaster Relief Squad's underground base in order to activate Kadingir.
  • Early on in XV, just as the Symphogear users have Noble Red cornered, they are forced to abandon their mission and return to headquarters as Genjuro and the Mission Control are being held at gunpoint by agents sent by Fudo, who has been Running Both Sides the entire time.

Comic Books

• Astro City: Subverted during the "Tarnished Angel" story arc. The protagonist, a minor-league supervillain trying to go straight, has to stage an attack on the Honor Guard's floating home base. (Honor Guard is the AC version of the JLA). He's not trying to blow it up, though — he just wants to get the Honor Guard's attention and this is the only way he can think of to do it. So he blows his way in and then just stands there while the heroes come charging up to defend their home base. (Naturally they are not pleased with his method of getting their attention and they fail to listen to his story or help him the way he'd hoped.)
• X-Men: The Xavier Institute has been attacked — and destroyed — often enough that it's the subject of occasional Lampshade Hanging and in-jokes within the comics. So often in fact that it's been outright abandoned at least twice. This just leads to their San Francisco island/Outback village/giant downtown spaceship/mystic lighthouse getting trashed instead.
• Batman:
  • Played with at the end of Dark Victory when the villains manage to invade the Batcave. However, the villains find it entirely by accident (they're simply trying to escape the chaos in the sewers) and are completely unable to capitalize on their find before Batman and a debuting Robin take them down. Most of the villains probably aren't even aware where they actually are.
  • Used for ironic purposes in Batman: Cataclysm. Every Waynetech building survived the titular giant earthquake because Bruce Wayne made sure all his buildings were quake-proofed. Unfortunately, the Batcave and Wayne Manor were not.
  • Played straight in Batman R.I.P., where the Black Glove attack Batman in the Bat Cave, and after throwing him out on the street drugged up and mentally unbalanced, they briefly coordinate the remainder of their plan from there until relocating to Arkham Asylum for the endgame.
• Fantastic Four:
  • The FF's HQ gets blown up real good on a pretty regular basis (and invaded from the Negative Zone and other fun stuff). It's a downside of not having a secret identity and having your base be a well-known landmark and tourist destination. They usually rebuild it quickly with improvements, but sometimes there are lasting effects: during John Byrne's run on the book, he had Annihilus attack and trash the place while Alicia and Franklin were at home. Franklin's New Powers as the Plot Demands failed to activate and both of them wound up seriously hurt in the hospital for weeks. The FF were very much not happy. Reed later realized this and designed the Baxter Building to be able to rebuild itself after an attack.
  • Doctor Doom shot the Baxter Building into space in his second appearance in comics. A Doom imposter later succeeded.
• Captain America wasn't pleased either in the aftermath of the Avengers storyline "Under Siege", where supervillain Baron Zemo and the Masters of Evil succeed in taking over the team's headquarters.
  • Considering the fact that the Masters not only injured fellow Avenger Hercules, as well as faithful butler Jarvis, but Zemo tried (in vain) to break Cap's spirit by destroying his personal effects, which included the only photo of his deceased mother Sarah, as well as his original triangular-shaped shield, his reaction is probably justified.
  • As a result of this attack, the Avengers ended up moving their base to an artificial island named, naturally, Avengers Island. The fact it's mentioned on this page can probably tell you what happened to it.
  • The New Avengers have a poor track record when it comes to headquarters. Justified to an extent during Civil War (2006) and Dark Reign, when they were hiding from Stark's Mighty Avengers and Norman Osborn's Dark Avengers. Avengers Mansion has been a frequent victim.
• Doctor Strange: The Sanctum Sanctorum is imperiled on a regular basis (once while it was serving as the headquarters of the New Avengers). He always comes back to it.
• The Second Titans Tower, home base of the Teen Titans, was designed to address this problem with the whole above ground building being a hologram to attract enemies intending mayhem.
• A defining moment in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book: after Baxter Stockman unleashes his Mouser robots, they destroy the turtles' lair, forcing the turtles to relocate to April's apartment. Afterwards, the Foot attack the apartment, setting it on fire and forcing the turtles to relocate to Casey's grandmother's farmhouse in Massachusetts. Said story was eventually adapted in the first movie and second cartoon, with minor changes: in the movie, the Foot are responsible for both attacks, and in the cartoon, the turtles are present for the initial attack (only Splinter is present in the original).
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
  • Before Ian Flynn's run, this happened twice: first when Robotnik learns the location of Knothole and attacks it in the EndGame arc, and then when Dr. Eggman decides to say "screw it" to his stalemate with the Kingdom of Acorn and rains Death from Above with his Egg Fleet, burning it to cinders.
  • Tends to happen a lot with Flynn's run. The Evil Twins of "Moebus" managed to take Freedom HQ (which is all that's left of Knothole from said Death From Above) but this time, they could crash at New Mobotropolis (they got it back). However, with the Iron Dominion figuring out that they could control the helpful AI there, let's just say they press their advantage and take over the city. This time, only a few manage to get out but several of the heroes manage to fight within the city.
  • Then Eggman launches an attack with the Death Egg Mk. II, which is temporarily interrupted by the Cosmic Retcon of the Genesis arc, and resumes once the retcon is undone. This includes releasing the Titan Metal Sonic to wreak havoc. Oh, and this all coincides with an Evil Plan by Ixis Naugus to usurp control of the city. The former fails; the latter doesn't.
  • And just when they're recovering from this, the Battle Bird Armada attacks the city and destroys the royal palace.
  • Eggman launched another attack on the city but was repelled by the efforts of Team Freedom (with some anonymous aid from the Secret Freedom Fighters) and the fact that the Death Egg was running low on power.
  • Near the climax of the Shattered World Saga, Eggman launches two of these simultaneously — he has the Battle Bird Armada and Phage attack the Freedom Fighters' mobile base, Sky Patrol, in order to destroy it and kidnap Chip. Meanwhile, he's also having the Hooligans, the Witchcarters, and Metal Sonic attack Castle Acorn in order to steal the Chaos Emeralds and Gaia Keys.
• Justice League of America: The Watchtower has been taken over by villains a number of times. At one point, the writers had to promise to not destroy it anymore unless they rebuilt it first.
• Supergirl:
  • The Supergirl-Batgirl Plot: As posing as Batgirl, Batmite strips off everything from the Batcave while Batman and Robin are away. Meanwhile, Mr. Mxyzptlk, who is impersonating Supergirl, steals the whole Fortress of Solitude.
  • Supergirl Adventures Girl Of Steel: A copy of Brainiac takes over Metropolis' S.T.A.R. Labs and captures the Supers when they try to free the place.
• Superman:
  • In Krypton No More, Super-villain Protector storms the Fortress of Solitude... right when both Superman and Supergirl are at home. Let's say it wasn't a very brilliant plan.
  • The Great Phantom Peril: After driving Superman out of Metropolis, Faora Hu-Ul breaks into the Fortress of Solitude and crushes the Phantom Zone Projector so nobody can get Superman out of the Zone.
  • In H'el on Earth, H'el throws Superman and Superboy out of the Fortress of Solitude to use the technology in it for his plans. The fortress is so impenetrable that Superman has to call up the Justice League to launch an attack on it.
  • Reign of Doomsday: Doomsday storms and seizes control over the JLA Watchtower to kidnap Cyborg Superman.
  • The Phantom Zone: After escaping from the Zone and sending Superman into it, the Phantom Zoners break into Superman's Fortress of Solitude, using its own key as a giant battering ram, and destroy anything that could be used to get Superman out of his dimensional prison.
    "While Superman endeavors to explain the situation, Zod and his band prepare to invade his arctic sanctum..."
  • The Plague of the Antibiotic Man: Taking advantage that there are only two heroes in the JLA's satellite base and one of them is bedridden, Amalak breaks into the Watchtower, disables Green Lantern and sets a trap for Superman.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW): It happens to the uber cute kingdom of cat people that Chrysalis and the Changelings land in after getting blown across the sky in A Canterlot Wedding. They promptly twist the place into their own image and drain the populace of their love, indicating that the Changeling Kingdom we've seen in the comic isn't the original. By the time the Mane 6 have gotten to the Queen at the start of issue #4, all that's left are green-goop-covered homes and solitary heart-shaped greetings on the ground.
• Judge Dredd: The Grand Hall of Justice has been taken over by different bad guys at different times. Judge Cal did it from the inside when he assassinated his superior and then took the helm; foreign take-overs have included the East Meg One invasion during the Apocalypse War, the Dark Judges' invasion during Necropolis, and an invasion mounted by a group of excommunicated Judges who escaped from the Titan prison.
• In Global Frequency #11, a strike team hits Aleph's almost literal Hacker Cave in order to kill her and thus cripple the Frequency's informational advantage. It ... doesn't end well for them.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW):
  • The end of Issue #8 has the Egg Fleet (now led by Neo Metal Sonic) seizing control of Angel Island. Sonic and his allies then have to spend the next three issues fighting to retake the island.
  • In Issue #22, Restoration HQ falls to the Zombot plague when an infected refugee slips into the base and changes, triggering an outbreak that soon overwhelms the building and sends the few lucky enough not to get infected fleeing.
  • In Issue #28, Zavok (who usurped control of Eggman's resources, including the Zombots) arrives at Angel Island, which is now the only safe zone left. Rouge manages to sabotage his ship and cause it to crash, but this just causes an enraged Zavok to grow into his One-Winged Angel form and start throwing Zombots onto the island. The heroes then spend most of the following issue making a desperate Last Stand, while Sonic and Silver try to get the last Chaos Emerald off of Zavok in order to defeat him and cure the Zombots.
  • In Issue #42, the Deadly Six attack the new Restoration HQ after luring all the heavy-hitters away. At the same time, Dr. Starline sneaks in and uses the chaos of the attack as cover while kidnapping Belle the Tinkerer.
  • In the Imposter Syndrome miniseries, Dr. Starline and his new enforcers, Surge and Kitsunami, attack Eggman's headquarters, Eggtropolis, in order to usurp him and lure Sonic and Tails into a trap.
• The Ultimates: The Chitauri manage to infiltrate several key ranks of SHIELD, and the others simply obey orders without questioning them. This allows them to take control of the Triskelion.

Comic Strips

• In Twisted Toyfare Theatre, Dr. Doom's only major accomplishment is repeatedly shooting the Baxter Building into space.

Fan Works

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): : The ultimate fate of Alan Jonah and his paramilitary forces in the Ural outpost, due to a combination of the Many overrunning the base and Ghidorah's decapitated head psychically inflicting Sanity Slippages to drive Jonah and his men towards aiding the Many's propagation.
• In Ace Combat: The Equestrian War, the griffins attack and besiege Canterlot from chapter 14 until 17. Earlier, in chapter 8, they take over Cloudsdale. It remains theirs until it's recaptured in chapter 14.
• The Final Battle of Advent Crossover Crisis takes place at the home base of the heroes, the Battleship Halberd, when the villains unexpectedly teleport in.
• Aurora (PonyholicsAnonymous): At the story's climax, Dawnbringer's army of Eldritch Abominations overruns most of Canterlot with the Princesses ultimately deciding to evacuate and abandon the city, followed by destroying it in an attempt to kill Dawnbringer (which backfires badly).
• Avenger of Steel: In Chapter 39, Madame Gao leads an army of demonically-possessed people against Avengers Tower in order to retrieve Raven, whom the Avengers are sheltering. The resulting battle in further complicated when the Hand's dragon ally Ao Shun also shows up to attack the tower, engulfing it in his bulk and threatening to tear it apart.
• Between Minds: Alyx and Barney have to deal with an invasion of White Forest, helicopter and reverse-engineered alien technology style!
• The Myth of Link & Zelda: Breath of the Wild, as a fanmade novelization, has some arcs that weren't present in the namesake game. One of these original arcs is a massive War Arc with the Yiga Clan. It officially begins with the Yiga laying siege and attacking every major settlement across Hyrule in one fell swoop. Thankfully, the heroes had just enough warning to mount a defense and throw back the Yiga.
• Bring Me to Life: In chapter 34, the First (now possessing Jasmine's Nigh-Invulnerable body) leads the Beast and a small army of Bringers in attacking the Hyperion Hotel. This is to both inflict as much damage as possible on the combined forces of the Scooby Gang and Angel Investigations, while also allowing them to steal the Keystone needed for the First's plans.
• Burning Black: Remy attempts to destroy the Ivory Tower shortly after it's been built by hiring demolition teams, but is foiled when Timmy wishes a memorial of himself onto the building, placing it under the city's protection. Later, Remy attacks it himself brazenly with a tank and does serious damage to the tower before the tank is destroyed and he's run off.
• In Chaotic Harmony, Dr. Eggman completely thrashes Twilight Sparkle's library looking for... a book.
• Child of the Storm:
  • In Chapter 16, the HYDRA/Death Eater/Gravemoss alliance breaks into Castel Montesi in order to steal the Darkhold.
  • In Chapter 21, Lucius has Gravemoss destroy MI6, and the Winter Soldier destroy MI13's bases around London.
  • In Chapter 70, HYDRA launches a worldwide attack on everyone they view as a threat — Hogwarts, SHIELD, the Ministry, various intelligence agencies and heads of state, etc. — and for the most part pull it off completely successfully.
  • In Chapter 74, Zola hacks into and seizes control of Avengers Tower. This results in Steve and Bruce being captured, before Tony destroys the tower to keep his tech out of HYDRA's hands; badly wounded by this, he ends up captured as well.
  • In chapter 32 of the sequel, Ghosts of the Past, Dracula launches an attack on Avengers Mansion in order to abduct Carol. To bypass the mansion's defenses (and the whole Threshold issue), he telekinetically tears the building apart, then sends his minions to swarm the individual pieces.
• Children of an Elder God:
  • Happens offscreen to NERV's American base, with everyone on site being killed by Yig's serpents and their EVAs stolen by Tsathoggua.
  • In Chapter 18, Y'Golonac possesses the Rei clone Gendo was using as a sex slave and goes on a rampage across NERV HQ, even managing to impersonate Gendo in order to seize control of MAGI.
  • In Chapter 19, Shudde M'ell and his Cthonians attack the Geofront, causing enough damage that it partly caves in, dropping portions of Tokyo-3 on the NERV base.
  • In Chapter 20, Ubbo-Sathala (which NERV was using as the source of LCL) awakens and breaks out of containment, overrunning much of the base, with the aid of the Rei clones that it mentally possesses. This eventually causes enough damage that the already destabilized Geofront caves in entirely, wiping out NERV HQ, with only the main characters and a few supporting ones escaping.
  • In Chapter 21, a terrorist group invades NERV's German base, capturing several of the main characters.
  • In Chapter 23, the Deep Ones and Star Spawn launch massive attacks on every remaining NERV base around the world, wiping them all out. Chapter 24 reveals that, simultaneous to this, a mind-controlled Makoto sabotaged the Scimitar, causing it to crash.
• Code Prime:
  • In the fifth chapter of R2 - Revolution, the Decepticons locate the Ark's location and launch a full-scale attack on it, leading to a Big Badass Battle Sequence as the Autobots try to defend themselves. This battle ends with several named Decepticons, including Skywarp and Frenzy, being killed, and the Ark being launched again to escape, damaging the Nemesis in the process and making it crash into the same spot the Ark just left.
  • The twelfth and fourteenth chapters of R2 feature the Decepticons and their Euro-Brittanian allies launching attacks on the WZERO unit's headquarters at Castle Weisswolf. The first in repelled thanks to help from the Autobots and Black Knights, while the second is turned into a trap, as the heroes evacuate the civilian staff by Groundbridge and then let the Con forces break in, before blowing up the castle.
  • Chapter 33 of R2 sees the Decepticons attacking Horai Island with the Damocles, intending to wipe out the Autobots and Black Knights once and for all. They nearly succeed before Optimus is revived by the Forge of Souls Prime in a more powerful form, after which he protects the island with the Skyboom Shield and destroys the Damocles with the Star Saber, causing the Decepticons to flee.
• The Conversion Bureau: Cold War has Queen Chrysalis secretly take control of Canterlot castle about a month and a half before making contact with humanity.
• A Crown of Stars: The Avalon Empire army seized the whole city of Buenos Aires by luring the city soldiers into a stadium and using psychic manipulation to sedate them.
• Batman fanfic Dance with the Demons' climatic final battle involves a bunch of Batman's villains plus an army of Kobra soldiers storming Wayne Manor.
• In Dungeon Keeper Ami, Alphel briefly takes over Mercury's dungeon in a joint strike with Keepers Arachne and Nero, while Nero creates a distraction forcing all of Mercury's minions to fight on a battlefield of his choice. The battle is vicious and protracted; but in the end all three are defeated.
• In Earth's Alien History, the Mekon War begins with the Mekon and his Romulan and Gamilan allies assaulting and taking control of the Citadel. They then use it as a staging point to invade and conquer most of Citadel Council space.
  • As the Reaper War is an invasion of all of the known galaxy, there's plenty of examples of this. This is most prominent during the Final Offensive, as they concentrate efforts on the homeworlds of all the major powers.
• The Elements of Harmony and the Savior of Worlds: After Tirac reveals himself, he launches Shadowbolt and Ursa Major attacks on Ponyville and Canterlot.
• The Equestrian Wind Mage:
  • Ganondorf occupies Canterlot early on in Season 2 as his headquarters for his conquest of Equestria. Fortunately, Vaati A) sees this coming, and B) knows that the ponies can't win a straight-up fight, so convinces the Princesses to evacuate to the Crystal Empire, and leave Discord behind to mess with Ganon's forces.
  • After securing himself in Canterlot, Ganondorf sends Phantom Ganon to lead an army in an assault on Ponyville, in order to break the ponies' will. It ultimately fails.
  • Upon learning that the Princesses are holed up in the Crystal Empire, Ganondorf marches the bulk of his army there to deal with them in order to solidify his control of Equestria.
  • Majora begins his attempts to conquer both worlds by having the Gohma and an army of the undead led by Gomess attack Hyrule Castle.
  • On the Equestrian side of things, the war starts with Sombra and Onox invading the Crystal Empire.
• Equestrylvania: Due to the Castle dimensionally displacing the royal castle and everyone in it (including the Princesses) and replacing it, it's child's play for Dracula's forces to occupy Canterlot and wipe out the Royal Guard.
• In the first story of the Facing the Future Series, both Fenton Works and Tucker's underground bunker are attacked. In an interesting subversion, the attackers are future versions of Danny and Sam.
• In the penultimate chapter of Book 1 of Forum of Thrones, the Ironborn launch a massive attack against Raylansfair, together with reinforcements from the Second Sons and the Band of Claws. Almost every Point-of-View character is present in the town at this point, leading to an entire chapter dedicated to this trope.
• A Future of Friendship, a History of Hate: In Episode 2, after Ruinate manages to defeat the Princesses and Mane Six, he has his shadow wraiths possess the Royal Guard and then sets up shop in the royal castle.
• In Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality to show how serious things are getting as the fic gets darker in Taboo Tradeoffs an as-of-yet unspecified person, but most likely Voldemort/Quirell, False-Memory Charms Draco and Hermione so that they both think Hermione tried to kill Draco and casts the Blood Freezing Charm on Draco to frame Hermione, all inside Hogwarts, the fortress of Dumbledore, Leader of the Light.
• Hours 'Verse: Chapter 10 of Intermezzo shows how Yaldabaoth took over the Velvet Room. He imprisions Igor, drives out Margaret, Elizabeth, and Theodore, and captures Nameless, Belladonna, and Lavenza, splitting the latter into two amnesiac halves to obscure her memories; then forbids entry for anyone other than his Trickster and his opponent, at least until the Big Damn Heroes break in to reclaim it late in Butterfly Cascade.
• The Immortal Game has several examples:
  • Nihilus attacking Ponyville in her initial assault on the Mane Six.
  • The Puppets and Royal Army attacking the Loyalist base in the Canterlot undercity.
  • Terra attacking Ponyville again as a means of punishing the Loyalists for retaking Canterlot.
• In the MLP / Green Lantern crossover In Brightest Day, Black Lantern Leader Nightmare Moon has her forces launch an attack on Ponyville, take out several Royal Gaurds & Wonderbolts before taking over the village in less than a day.
• Invader Zim: A Bad Thing Never Ends: Given the number of factions fighting each other, this happens a number of times:
  • In Chapter 2, Zim and his minions launch a day-long siege of the Membrane house to try and breach its defenses.
  • In Chapter 6, Tak announces her return to Earth by attacking Zim's base, intending to kill him and his minions and take control of the base for herself as a replacement for her nearly defunct Deelishus Weenie base.
  • In Chapter 8, Zim returns the favor by ordering his minions to assault Tak's base in an attempt to kill her.
  • In Chapter 12, Tak attacks the Membrane house in an attempt to recover her ship.
  • In Chapter 13, Tak and Lex launch a full-scale assault on Zim's base to try and steal Minimoose.
  • Chapter 14 starts with Aldrich giving Iggins control of an Attack Drone, which he uses to attack the Membrane house and Zim and Tak's bases, which quickly transitions to a High-Altitude Battle as all three factions fight back.
  • A downplayed example in Chapter 15, wherein during an argument with Lex, Tak is suddenly hit with the worrisome realization that with the small army of DIRs at his disposal, he's effectively taken over her base during the course of their partnership. When their alliance eventually breaks down in Chapter 18, Lex seizes complete control of the facility from her.
  • In Chapter 19, Lex and Aldrich announce their Villain Team-Up by sending a CADIR to attack Zim's base.
• Jewel of Darkness: Much like the canon Teen Titans universe, Titans Tower is assaulted several times over the course of the story:
  • First, like in canon, the HIVE trio attacks the tower after supposedly killing Robin and temporarily take it from the Titans.
  • Later, during a three-pronged attack on the city, Midnight sends a couple dozen Mecha-Mooks to assault the tower, though they're repelled by Jinx.
  • Though we don't see it, Mad Mod somehow manages to infiltrate the tower and kidnap the Titans for his "school".
• In The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time (DragonRand100), Ganondorf leads an army to attack Castletown by transporting his forces through a secret portal underneath Hyrule Castle. His army then exterminates most of Hyrule's royalty and many nobles. As Hyrule Castle falls, the armies then attack Castletown and sack it.
• A Man of Iron: Despite all the changes from canon, the last third of Book 2, A Crack of Thunder, still sees Winterfell attacked and conquered by the Ironborn, albeit this time by Asha and Vanko's Renegade Splinter Faction rather than Theon who stays loyal to the Starks. Unlike canon, however, this doesn't last long as Rickon (now grown up into Star Lord) arrives with the other Guardians to drive them out.
• In Mega Man: Defender of the Human Race, Wily takes over the Civil Defense Tower and locks it down in order to prevent anyone from stopping Drill Man from flooding the tower with lava by way of the Earth's core.
• MLP Next Generation: Know Fear!, being a War Fic, has plenty of examples of this, though the occupation of Cloudsdale is the most clear-cut example.
• My Little Avengers: Loki briefly sets up shop in the Avengers Mansion at the climax of his Gambit Roulette (and the beginning of the story's Darkest Hour), before he and the Dark Avengers move on to occupy the royal palace.
• Night of the Shy: Nightmare Shy begins her war against Equestria by attacking Ponyville in an attempt to kill the rest of the Mane Cast. She succeeds with Rainbow Dash and the Princesses. After the girls and their allies are forced to flee, Nightmare kills most of the town's citizens and burns the town to the ground.
  • In chapter 6, Nightmare's Diamond Dog armies, aided by a swarm of parasprites, lays siege to Canterlot. They ultimately succeed in killing a majority of the Royal Guard and overrunning the city.
  • The following chapter, she sends a swarm of cockatrices to attack Cloudsdale which quickly curbstomps the Royal Guard contingent there.
• In the original version of The Night Unfurls, the Black Dogs' main goal is the conquest of Eostia, so naturally, this trope often occurs in the form of takeovers or assaults on several main strongholds of the Seven Shields.
  • Feoh/Ur Arc: Since Alicia thinks that surrendering her control of Feoh and Ur for a group of nuns is a brilliant idea, Prime Minister Beasley and his cronies are ready to welcome the Black Dogs into the two fortresses, essentially a takeover with little resistance, the good guys' none the wiser. Their operation would've been successful if it weren't for Kyril's hunch that something is not right, namely, Feoh's missing garrison. The two strongholds are ultimately retaken thanks to Kyril and his two apprentices rescuing the people responsible for intelligence and invoking The Cavalry.
  • Ansur Arc: The Black Dogs attack Ansur with the help of the crime families within. Once again, they are repelled by Kyril and The Cavalry.
  • Rad Arc: Thanks to the Shamuhaza's efforts, Rad is taken over before the heroes arrive, making this instance a successful example. In fact, the attack is so successful that even though they manage to destroy all the mutated Elite Mooks that overrun the entire fortress, there are heavy implications that most, if not all, civilians are dead, and survivors would have to suffer from the destruction of their homeland.
• Pony POV Series:
  • Due to being much better prepared than in cannon, the Wedding Arc sees Chrysalis successfully and covertly take over Canterlot and the heroes have to spend the entire arc retaking it.
  • Discord and his group one up Chrysalis by a big margin by corrupting Canterlot, Cloudsdale, Ponyville and nearly everywhere else in one foul swoop at the beginning of the Rumors Arc.
• Queen of All Oni: During Operation: Steel Lightning, Jade infiltrates Section 13 via possessed Captain Black's shadow before releasing the full force of the sumo tribe as a distraction, so she can steal the other masks from the Vault. It's only through Agent Wisker's unforeseen interference that she's stopped.
  • Drago later breaks into Section 13 (apparently through the air vents, which he calls a cliche) in an attempt to steal the Talismans. Fortunately, Karasu also breaks in, and keeps him distracted long enough for the heroes to show up and scare him off.
  • The Final Battle kicks off with Operation Endgame, a full-scale assault on Section 13 by all of Jade's combined forces.
• Shadows Awakening:
  • In chapter 2, Daolon Wong attacks Section 13 to steal the Talismans, and in the process gives Shendu the opening to summon his Ninja Khan, leading to a brief Mêlée à Trois across the facility.
  • Ten chapters later, after Kyosuke/The Phantom sneaks in and uses the Dark Treasures to revive himself, he unleashes his Ghost Khan, possessing half the agents and turning them on the others.
  • During the Final Battle, the Queen launches multiple attacks across San Francisco, dividing Section 13's manpower enough for Kyosuke to launch another attack on the facility.
• Shadows over Meridian opens with Jade attacking Elyon's castle with the full might of the nine tribes as a distraction while breaking into the Infinite City prison to free Phobos and his minions. However, once she has done that, she pulls the Shadowkhan back so that the heroes are left to lick their wounds and give her time to set in motion her plan to put Phobos back on the throne in a more secure way.
• Star Wars vs Warhammer 40K: Season 1 ends with a full-scale invasion and occupation of the Axum System by the Imperium of Man. Prior to the invasion, Axum was one of the most important star systems in the entire Galactic Republic, being the location of two founding Core Worlds as well as the Republic Navy's primary fleet base, reserve shipyards, and most prestigious military academy. Naturally, the Republic wants this system back and the next two seasons follow the Jedi Order and Clone Army doing just that as they launch an unsanctioned counter-invasion to liberate Axum from the Imperium's clutches.
• The Stars Will Aid Their Escape: Herald, via Trixie and his Dark Young mooks, attacks Ponyville in order to set up his Batman Gambit against the Princesses. Then, during the solar eclipse, he does so again in Canterlot in order to prepare the summoning ritual for Shub-Niggurath.
• Sudden Contact ends with a full on invasion of the Zerg on the Asari homeworld.
• Tarkin's Fist: The Imperials capture the American bases on Mars and on the moon, as well as the Chinese moonbase, prior to the official start of the Empire-Earth War.
• The Terminators: Army of Legend, a supercrossover military series, features the protagonists' capital of New Alexandria being subject to innumerable battles throughout the Second American Civil War. In at least two of these battles they managed to lose the city to enemy forces before abruptly taking it back.
• Vigilante Tendency: In a rare heroic example, Hibari "appropriates" the local Yakuza group's base for the Peaceful Namimori Committee to use for their vigilante activities. Said Yakuza are forcibly converted and eventually become their loyal minions.
• Webwork: The first thing Jade does after returning to Earth from the Emptiness is to attack Section 13 (easily overpowering the agents) in order to retrieve Tarakudo's mask.
• In What You Already Know: Resolutions, when Anubis infiltrates the SGC, he temporarily turns the entire base against Daniel Jackson (who possesses powerful mental abilities in this series) by possessing General Hammond and issuing an announcement that he's possessed Daniel and taken Jack O'Neill hostage; the two have to spend a few minutes fleeing their own side until Jack can change radio frequencies and convince Feretti and Carter that Daniel's still himself.
• Witches Rangers and the 141: The 501st Joint Fighter Wing home base in Pescara is infiltrated and assaulted by stranded Ultranationalist Inner Circle troops. For the first time in their lives, the Witches are forced to shoot other humans in their Alien Invasion-setting which horrifies them.
• In Young Justice: Darkness Falls, The Watchtower is the latest in the line of hero bases that gets attacked by the forces of Vandal Savage. The attack is comprised of hundreds of suicide jockeys and Parademons, which leads to 18 members of the team along with Sphere and Wolf being scattered across the country or to the future. Fortunately for the League, the watchtower is only partially destroyed, and gets rebuilt later.

Films — Animation

• The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Judge Claude Frollo raids the Court of Miracles, the safe haven of the gypsies, after an unwitting Quasimodo leads him there.
• In The LEGO Movie, Cloud Cuckooland, last bastion beyond the clutches of Lord Business gets completely obliterated by Lord Business's forces in a raid, in perhaps the most heart-wrenching scene in the movie.
• In The LEGO Batman Movie, the Joker turns Wayne Manor and the Batcave into his own twisted funhouse.
• Strange Magic: The Bog King's raid against the fairy kingdom is incredibly successful, with all the guards and royal family members subdued without any loss of life. Security was so terrible that he could have wiped out the royal family without any losses. Instead, he merely kidnaps one of the princesses to act as a hostage to swap for a stolen love potion.

Films — Live-Action

• As in the novel, both film versions of Dune have Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV conspire with House Harkonnen to destroy House Atreides, first by having them take stewardship of the planet Arrakis to extract the Spice, then by having their troops (Harkonnen soldiers, buttressed by Imperial Sardaukars) invade Arrakeen, the capital city where Atreides troops are concentrated, in a surprise assault with the help of The Mole and wipe them out. The Harkonnens are seen burning material remnants of House Atreides at the beginning of Dune: Part Two.
• Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019):
  • Alan Jonah stages an assault on the Monarch outpost 61 that contains Mothra. He succeeds in killing every outpost guard and conquers the base, before taking Madison and Emma hostage.
  • King Ghidorah takes over Washington D.C. (the capital of the United States) and reforms the area as his own base of operations. His Titan army is mentioned as attacking capitals all over the world as well.
• The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey: Smaug's historical sack of Erebor in the novel (see below) is used in the first movie to portray a cinematic fire-and-destruction sequence.
• Star Wars: In chronological order:
  • The Phantom Menace starts with the Trade Federation invading Naboo and taking over Amidala's palace as well.
  • Revenge of the Sith: The newly-minted Darth Vader storms the Jedi Temple, where he kills the young Padawans who were training there. According to supplementary material, Darth Sidious subsequently made it his official Imperial residence, since there was a Sith Temple underneath it.
  • A New Hope plays with the trope, with the Death Star coming after the base on Yavin IV and the Rebels attacking to stop it. In the EU, the Imperial counterattack stretched out into a months-long siege during which the Rebels evacuated in stages.
  • The famous battle of Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back, one of the last permanent bases that the Rebel Alliance had before the Empire discovered it, necessitating a complete evacuation.
  • The beginning of The Last Jedi shows the remaining Resistance forces evacuating their base on D'Qar as the remnants of the First Order attack.
• In Serenity, Mal discovers that the Operative has killed everyone who ever sheltered his crew in the past, including Shepherd Book.
  "If your quarry goes to ground, leave no ground to go to."
• Variation: In the live-action Ben 10 movie, the scene in which their mobile home is blown up by Eon.
• Typically the enemy mooks burst into the heroes' base and attack the Red Shirts, slaughter ensues, but all (or most) of the named characters escape to fight another day thanks to the heroic sacrifice of countless Red Shirts. Seen in Total Recall (1990), They Live!, and Logan's Run.
• The final showdown of John Woo's The Killer (1989) has the bad guys launching an assault upon the church that served as the title character's primary place of refuge and peace. And just to drive home the point that the church is no longer a sanctuary for him or his love interest, at one point during the shootout, one of the bad guys uses a shotgun to blow the church's centerpiece, the statue of Mary, to smithereens.
• The Blade Trilogy really likes this trope. Blade had this...and killed (indirectly) a main character no less! The feat was zig-zagged in Blade II: the invading vamps wanted to recruit Blade's help. But played straight in Blade: Trinity, also with the death of a supporting character... twice!
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Captain Jack Sparrow spends half his time getting back or stopping people from stealing his beloved ship, the Black Pearl.
• X-Men Film Series:
  • X2: X-Men United: General Stryker's forces take over Xavier's school, which is also the X-Men's base of operations.
  • X-Men: First Class: The group moves into Xavier's mansion after their previous HQ, a CIA compound, is attacked and destroyed by the Hellfire Club.
  • X-Men: Days of Future Past: In The Rogue Cut, Trask Industries have commandeered the X-Mansion, using it to experiment on mutants.
• The opening of the 1995 Ian McKellen version of Richard III begins with a commando attack on the King's headquarters led by Richard of Gloucester, prefaced by an anachronistic Soviet tank crashing through the wall.
• Happens early on in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
• In the climax of Batman Forever, after learning Batman's Secret Identity, Two-Face and the Riddler break into Wayne Manor. While Two-Face and his thugs deal with Bruce and Dr. Chase Maridan, Riddler locates the Batcave and starts lobbing bombs all over the place. For a touch of irony, he modeled the grenades in the shapes of little green bats.
  The Riddler: You know, it's always risky reintroducing a tamed animal into the wild. They may have trouble adapting to their new environment!
• The Dark Knight Trilogy: apparently Christopher Nolan loves doing this to Batman.
  • Batman Begins. Ra's al Ghul and his men walk right into the manor as guests at Bruce's birthday party. When he realizes who they are, he's quick to get everyone else out. Good thing, too, as they burn the house down immediately after.
  • The Dark Knight. The Joker and his henchmen invade Bruce's penthouse in an attempt to kill Harvey Dent. However, they never find out Bruce's identity as Batman, nor do they ever manage to get to Bruce's weaponry.
  • The Dark Knight Rises. Bane and his men destroy Wayne Enterprises R&D, and steal all the available Tumblers.
• In the film Battle of Britain, based on actual events, the British air forces have a HQ which controls all fighter squadrons that gets hit and almost destroyed.
• The Last Starfighter the Starfighter base is destroyed by an attack killing all the Starfighters except Alex, who had returned to Earth
• In Get Smart CONTROL headquarters is attacked by KAOS.
• G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Zartan, the Baroness, and Stormshadow lead a Cobra attack on the Joes headquarters, the "Pitt" located underneath the Sahara desert. The sequel has a full-on massacre on the HQ lead by the President Evil.
• Happens in Independence Day: The aliens take out every major military base in the second day of their invasion, including NATO's headquarters; the president then assumes command and control in Area 51, which is a safe haven because of its top-secret nature.
• The entire premise of Olympus Has Fallen is that a group of Korean terrorists assaults and occupies the White House, taking the President hostage.
• Two James Bond films, The World Is Not Enough and Skyfall, have bombings on the MI6 HQ. The latter also has the villain attacking Bond's hideout (Skyfall Lodge, his childhood home).
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • The Avengers: Loki manages it three times:
    • He infiltrates the secret S.H.I.E.L.D. facility, kills or subjugates the agents present, steals the Tesseract and leaves before the facility collapses in on itself due to an explosion caused by the Stone
    • Then his Brainwashed and Crazy soldiers assault the S.H.I.E.L.D Helicarrier, taking down one of its engines, pushing Banner over the edge and releasing Loki, who kills Coulson and sends Thor falling down inside a Glassy Prison
    • Finally, he takes over the Stark Tower to open the portal for the Chitauri army from its rooftop. It is becoming predictable, and Tony Stark guesses his plan:
      Tony: He made it personal. (...) That's Loki's point. He hit us all right where we live. (...) He wants to beat us, he wants to be seen doing it.
  • Iron Man 3: After Tony publically dares the Mandarin to come after him and leaves the address of his mansion in Malibu, the latter sends three helicopters to attack Tony in his home and destroy it with missiles.
  • Thor: The Dark World: Malekith and the Dark Elves attack Asgard in search of the Reality Stone, disable the shield over the royal palace from within, infiltrate it and kill the Queen, but have to leave without their prize.
  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier: It is revealed that there has been an organization-wide infiltration of S.H.I.E.L.D. by H.Y.D.R.A. Moles under the command of Alexander Pierce take control over the agency's DC Headquarters, Triskelion as well as all three Helicarriers.
  • Doctor Strange: Kaecilius and his Zealots attack all three Sanctums that the Masters of the Mystic Arts are sworn to protect. The London and Hong Kong Sanctums quickly fall to his assault, and the New York Sanctum is heavily damaged. Doctor Strange uses the Time Stone to reverse the damage done in Hong Kong.
  • Thor: Ragnarok:
    • Hela takes over Asgard by killing everyone who would oppose her and claims the royal palace for herself
    • Hela and Skurge (along with some resurrected Asgardian warriors) invade the ancient stronghold where the Asgardian refugees are hiding. Luckily, Heimdall and the refugees are already on their way to the Rainbow Bridge.
  • Avengers: Endgame: The climax kicks off when Thanos follows the Avengers from 2014 back to the New Avengers facility and launches an attack that obliterates it, before landing with his entire army in order to finish the Avengers and their allies off.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: First Contact: The Federation fleet holds back the Borg's attempt to assimilate Earth in the 24th century before the Borg travel back in time to assimilate it in the 21st century. The Enterprise follows them back and destroys their ship only to discover that they've secretly transported aboard and are assimilating the Enterprise before they attack Earth again.
  • In Star Trek Into Darkness John Harrison targets several Starfleet installations on Earth, from a data storage facility in London to Starfleet Headquarters in San Francisco.
    Harrison: Have I got your attention now?
• In The Matrix, a large deserted apartment building used by Morpheus and team as an operations center is assaulted by Agents and their mooks after one crew member does a Face–Heel Turn in trying to return to the pleasant illusions of the Matrix in exchange for his information.
• In The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, the Capitol's air raid on District 13, which thanks to Peeta's warning and outdated Capitol intel, fails to actually cause any real damage or fatalities.
• Near the end of Hardcore Henry, Akan's mercenaries assault the abandoned hotel housing Jimmy's lab, where he and Henry are currently holed up.
• Happens to Tracy Island in the infamous live-action Thunderbirds movie - after drawing the Tracys out of the island (by targeting Thunderbird 5 with a missile and subsequently trapping the Tracys on board when they get there in Thunderbird 3), the Hood and his forces plan to steal the Thunderbird craft and use them to steal from the biggest banks in the world, framing International Rescue as being responsible in the process. They meet unexpected resistance from Alan Tracy and his friends (who weren't actually part of IR and thus remained on the island), who attempt to stop the Hood's plans and rescue the others.
• The climax of Rambo: Last Blood is when Hugo Martinez and his group of Human Traffickers storm Rambo's ranch after Rambo decapitates Hugo's brother Victor and lures the men to the house. Every one of them falls victim to Rambo's booby traps.
• In Demon Knight, The Collector's minions lay siege to the hotel in their efforts to retrieve the Key.
• The third act of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is largely about the Ghostbusters defending the Firehouse from Garraka and his various minions.

Gamebooks

• Happens in the beginning of the Lone Wolf series. The Kai Monastery is attacked and destroyed by a massive army of the Darklords, at the one time they knew that every Kai in Sommerlund would be in one place. Lone Wolf is the only one to avoid the destruction. Later, he's able to rebuild it and start up the Kai teachings once again in between missions.

Literature

• Tolkien's Legendarium:
  • The Hobbit: Before the start of the book, the dragon Smaug attacked and conquered the Lonely Mountain from the dwarves, driving an entire kingdom's survivors into poverty and exile in the wilds for years while he held the mountain and its treasure as the de facto king. Taking the Lonely Mountain (and the goodies inside) back from him is the dwarves' motivations in their quest.
  • The Lord of the Rings: Sauron's forces have long since destroyed, and currently occupy, Osgiliath. Gondor's current capital, Minas Tirith, used to be just a gateway suburb of Osgiliath.
  • The Fall of Gondolin: Morgoth's army storms the hidden valley and attack the city of Gondolin. Its gates, walls and towers are smashed down and burned by dragons and fire snakes, letting Orcs and Balrogs invade, pillage and burn the city. As their city is destroyed, the survivors flee towards the mountains.
• Dune: The capital city of House Atreides was conquered by the Harkonnens, with the Harkonnens using treachery to open a gap in the base's defense and attack under cover of night, with imperial troops on loan.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • This happens in A Clash of Kings, when Theon Greyjoy takes Winterfell, only to get outmaneuvered by the Boltons, who take the castle in turn.
  • In A Storm of Swords, Daenerys Targaryen conquers three cities in Slaver's Bay, but only decides to settle in the third, Meereen. She soon learns that by leaving the others without an adequate succession roadmap, all hell breaks loose: Astapor undergoes a Full-Circle Revolution and becomes a Wretched Hive, while Yunkai returns to slavery.
  • Riverrun, the seat of House Tully, is invaded by the Lannisters and Freys in A Feast for Crows, the latter of whom make it their secondary seat.
  • In A Dance with Dragons, after Quentyn Martell foolishly frees them, Daenerys' dragons Rhaegal and Viserion make their lair atop two pyramids of Meereen, killing or evicting the noble families who inhabit them.
  • Also happened in the backstory when the Queen of the Vale was quite shocked to look outside and see Visenya Targaryen and her dragon playing in the garden with her son. Turns out a mountaintop fortress isn't quite so impregnable when you have a creature that can fly. The Queen wisely decided to surrender.
• The climax of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince involves the Death Eaters invading Hogwarts after Malfoy finally managed to find a way to sneak them past the school's defenses.
  • The part where Sirius' house is compromised and they have to abandon it qualifies.
  • Also happened at the end of the sixth book, but not quite as severe.
  • Played straight in-universe when Voldemort takes over the Ministry.
• Belamy's home, Skate's shelter when she's not in one of the Ink's safehouses, gets taken over by gang members near the end of Skate the Thief.
• The siege of Troy, told from the perspective of the Trojans in the The Aeneid, is an example of this trope, while it is an example of Storming the Castle, as told from the Greek perspective in the Illiad.
• The Chronicles of Prydain, book five. Caer Dathyl is destroyed by invincible elite undead, so the heroes attack the enemy while the undead are away.
• In the Dale Brown novel Flight of the Old Dog, the titular Airstrike Impossible is started prematurely when supposedly Soviet attackers strike at Dreamland.
  • Shadow Command has this happen, with the attackers being other Americans duped by the Unwitting Pawn POTUS.
• The Yuuzhan Vong captured Coruscant in Star by Star.
• During the Trauma Conga Line that was The Dresden Files book Changes, this happens twice. First his office building is revealed to have been bought by Red Court vampires years ago, who have inserted explosives into the walls (and put up the rent) and proceed to blow it up. Then they firebomb his home. Also, he's seriously injured rescuing his neighbors.
• The Camp Half-Blood Series:
  • Happens twice in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Firstly, in Battle of the Labyrinth, Kronus' army invades Camp Half-Blood via the Labyrinth, causing the titular battle. Secondly, in The Last Olympian, the final battle with Kronos takes place in the throne room of Olympus itself.
  • The Heroes of Olympus:
    • Polybotes' invasion of New Rome.
    • New Rome's invasion of Camp Half Blood.
  • The Trials of Apollo: The Hidden Oracle has the Beast (being none other than Nero) attacking Camp Half-Blood with his Colossus Neronis.
• This happens early on in Trapped on Draconica when Baalaria conquers Brittania's capital city and then moves on. Later they claim the Eastern Alliance's base too.
  • Also happens in the sequel, Legacy of the Dragokin where a city in Drewghaven becomes the heroes base of operations. During the climax, it's invaded and trashed.
• In Greek Ninja, Ariadnio, the school Sasha Hunter is attending, is invaded. In the battle between the opposing forces that follows, her teacher is killed and thus, the story begins.
• In The Wind in the Willows, the Weasels and other creatures of the Wild Wood take over Toad Hall while Toad is in prison, and he and his friends must Storm the Castle via a secret tunnel.
• Warrior Cats:
  • It happens in the very first book, Into the Wild, when ShadowClan launches a surprise attack on the ThunderClan camp. Fortunately, ShadowClan is driven off.
  • Happens in Twilight, only it's the heroes doing it. Not wanting badgers that could threaten them on their new territory, the cats of ThunderClan drive a mother badger and her young out of their home. This backfires massively when a huge army of badgers show up in the climax for a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
  • In Dawn of the Clans, the Followers of the Sun Trail are attacked in their camp on the moor by some foxes that want it as their new home. Gray Wing gets to show off his skills as The Strategist by getting everyone together and driving them off.
• Happened to Sherlock Holmes, somewhat famously, in the classic Doyle story "The Adventure of the Empty House". Shortly after Holmes reveals that he survived his confrontation with Professor Moriarty three years previous, Moriarty's surviving right-hand man Colonel Sebastian Moran (a feared marksman and big game hunter) manages to track Holmes down to his Baker Street apartment, and comes dangerously close to assassinating him. Luckily, Holmes sets up a decoy dummy and flees Baker Street at just the right moment.
• For Want of a Nail: the [horse]shoe was lost, and the rider was either a spy with vital information about the invaders' strategy or else a pivotal fighter in the battle. Either way, his horse throwing a shoe led to his side losing the battle and then the kingdom, "and all for the want of a horseshoe nail."
• In the Space Marine Battles novel The Purging of Kadillus, the orks have seized control of the Dark Angels' basilica off-page by the start of the first chapter. Chaplain Boreas then leads multiple assaults in an effort to take the basilica back, finally succeeding on his fifth attempt.
• Everland: The Marauders storm the Lost City and capture the surviving children after Jack reluctantly reveals their location to Hook.
• The Golden Hamster Saga: In Freddy in Peril, Freddy and Sir William return to the abandoned house where they're hiding out, only to find that Professor Fleischkopf has broken in and captured Enrico and Caruso and is waiting for them.

Live-Action TV

• Game of Thrones:
  • Theon Greyjoy takes Winterfell with a tiny force thanks to a feint and holds it for a while in Season 2. After Ramsay takes Moat Caitlin, the Boltons and their forces take up residence at the end of Season 4.
  • Robb Stark has this in mind for the Lannisters in Season 3.
  • This is how the Targaryens regard the Sack of King's Landing and Robert's claim to the Iron Throne.
  • In Daenerys' eyes, usurpers are occupying the throne of her father and her brothers, Rhaegar and Viserys. She is right though still oblivious about the kind of man her father really was. Later, in "Oathkeeper", Daenerys pulls this on Meereen when she takes up residence in the Great Pyramid, the most impressive building in Meereen, and drapes the Targaryen banner over the Ghiscari harpy at its peak. She also retakes Dragonstone, the island of her birth, after it was vacated by Stannis Baratheon, the man who chased her out on King Robert's orders.
  • The Ironborn took House Glover's castle during the events of Seasons 2-4.
  • In "The Door", the White Walkers and their wight army storm the Three-Eyed Raven's cave.
• In The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, despite being seemingly defeated by the Southlanders and Numenor's forces, Adar still wins in the end once Mt. Doom erupts, turning the Southlands into Mordor. The survivors have no choice but to flee, and the Orcs claim the lands for themselves.
• The Power Rangers have this as a once-a-season tradition.
  • All three seasons of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers has it. The Green Ranger attacks and pillages the Command Center in the first two seasons, while Rito and Goldar plant a bomb that destroys it in the third.
  • At the end of Power Rangers Turbo, Divatox and her Piranhatrons launched an all-out assault upon the Power Chamber and ended up destroying it, but got recalled by Dark Specter, who had captured Zordon, before she could take over the planet, prompting the Rangers to pursue her into space and kick off Power Rangers in Space.
  • After that, "villains attacking the base" became a staple of the Grand Finale. Lightspeed Rescue, Time Force, Ninja Storm, and Dino Thunder all include scenes of the Rangers' base (and, in some cases, home) being spectacularly destroyed. Lost Galaxy played with the format by having the heroes purposefully self destruct their spaceship base to deter their enemies.
  • Lightspeed Rescue was unique in that immediately after their base was destroyed, the Rangers regrouped and went on the offensive, successfully invading the villain's headquarters.
  • Interestingly, in Dino Thunder, this trope got pulled on them because they were busy Storming the Castle. And by a character who, at that point, was no longer loyal to the Big Bad.
  • In the Non-Serial Movie Ivan Ooze strolls in, wrecks the place, and tries to murder Zordon all the while lamenting having missed the black plague, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Brady Bunch Reunion.
  • The series in which the Rangers' base is invaded but survives, we must add in Lost Galaxy (The ship was destroyed as well as most of Terra Venture, but the city dome of the space station gets a relatively gentle landing), Wild Force, SPD, Mystic Force, and Operation Overdrive. That leaves Space, the ship did get invaded once during Space, just not in the finale.
    • Power Rangers in Space has this during the crossover with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It happens early in the season so it is often overlooked.
  • Inverted in Jungle Fury: Casey gate-crashed the villain's hideout, beat the Big Bad out of his host body and then dragged said host body out. Meanwhile, the Ranger's base, situated in a Pizza Parlor, is left completely untouched.
  • Power Rangers RPM had Tenaya 7 cause havoc by detaching her robot hand and sneaking it into the Rangers' base early on. Just a few episodes later, it happened again when a wedding being held in the Rangers' base got crashed, and it officially reached Running Gag territory when Tenaya invaded it again just two episodes after the "wedding". After that, though, the base stayed relatively untouched until the Grand Finale and its obligatory Trash the Set.
    • There's also a unique case by Venjix, in that he technically invades the whole city at once just prior to the finale. How? By planting hybrids throughout the population of Corinth and activating them. In one stroke, the Rangers were outnumbered by innocent civilians — and even some of their fellow allies — now under Venjix's control (and the usual PR villain tactics had been simply a ruse to prevent the discovery of his sleeper agents until it was too late).
  • Overall, only Power Rangers Zeo, Power Rangers Samurai and the first season of Power Rangers Megaforce avoid this trope and its inverse (Storming the Castle). Zeo avoiding the trope is ironic, since its Super Sentai source material, Chouriki Sentai Ohranger, abuses a Time Skip to allow two instances of the heroes' base getting invaded, involving two entirely different bases.
  • Similar to the Dino Thunder example above, Power Rangers S.P.D. also has the Rangers' base come under attack by a character who was no longer loyal to the Big Bad, leading his own army which includes three Generals. This occurs while the team is dealing with their A-Squad counterparts, who have previously captured the Shadow Ranger. The only ranger present during the attack on the base is the Omega Ranger.
  • In Power Rangers Beast Morphers, Big Bad Evox (who later is revealed to be essentially a reborn Venjix) invaded Grid Battleforce in the most brilliantly simplistic method possible: by allowing the Rangers to take him prisoner, so he could then break out and attack the base from the inside.
• One of the cooler episodes of The Sentinel involved the Cascade police station being taken over and held hostage.
• NUMB3RS has "Rampage", where a gunman enters the bullpen and starts shooting around randomly it was a diversion and "Chinese Box", where David is held hostage in the building elevator.
• Every incarnation of Star Trek has done this with the various Cool Starships. Otherwise the various away teams would have been safe as soon as they could take a transporter out. Of course, this meant that they had the worst transporter room security ever.
  • One Original Series episode had an escaped prisoner (who turned out to be something else entirely) hiding in a crate of medical supplies, and making it all the way to the bridge without getting caught. It's a good thing the mentally unstable prisoner hadn't decided to shoot Kirk with his phaser.
  • Also, Khan took over the ship in "Space Seed", and the Kelvans took it over in "By Any Other Name".
  • One season of Deep Space Nine had the station being occupied by the Dominion. Gul Dukat seemed happy to get his office back, though, since from where the Cardassians sit (or at least Gul Dukat sits), the Federation pulled an All Your Base on them.
    • Also, this trope was inverted in a third season episode of Deep Space Nine. Sisko, Jake, and O'Brien accidentally set off a Cardassian counterinsurgent program which was "inadvertently" left in the station computer. This set off an increasingly ridiculous chain of hopeless death traps, with each successive death trap growing increasingly more fatal and overengineered each time the crew attempted to defeat the previous death trap. The kicker was when Dukat himself couldn't even disable the program.
  • The Borg pulled an "All Your Captain Are Belong To Us" by assimilating Picard, then shortly having the Borgified Picard send a message that "You have no chance to resist; make your time" to the Enterprise.
    • More embarrassingly, a group of Ferengi pirates snagged control of the ship using secondhand Klingon war surplus in "Rascals".
  • You get the picture by now, but for thoroughness' sake: psychic aliens took over the title ship in Voyager in "Waking Moments", after a fashion: the entire crew was trapped in a dream version of the ship in which they had taken over. Only Chakotay and the Doctor remained in the real world.
    • The crew members under the control of the Lotus-Eater Machine tried to keep Seven and the Doctor from keeping them from flying straight down the monster's throat. They were still in control of the ship, but they were definitely Not Themselves.
    • The second season finale had the Kazon-Nistrim taking over the ship outright and stranding the crew on a nearby planet, leaving their only chance to take it back in the hands of Tom Paris, Lon Suder, and the Doctor.
    • The season four episodes "The Killing Game" Parts I and II have Voyager taken over by the Hirogen. The Doctor is stuck healing injured crewmen so they can be returned to the holographic simulations for most of these episodes (but he eventually helps when it comes time to take the ship back).
    • The Doctor (can you tell he finds himself in a lot of "Die Hard" on an X situations when this happens? Being a Projected Man has its advantages) and another EMH had to take back a ship the Romulans had invaded.
  • And in Enterprise, we can't forget the numerous times the Suliban have been able to get in and out right under their noses. They're a slippery bunch indeed. They also had to deal with the Borg once.
    • And the Ferengi.
  • Discovery continues the tradition with an episode in which the titular starship is hijacked by Harry Mudd, of all people. Repeatedly. Discovery's Mudd is not a man to cross.
    • The last three episodes of Season 3 see the Discovery hijacked by the Emerald Chain, who use it to attack Federation HQ.
• A regular occurrence on Stargate SG-1, to the point where it is subverted in a later season: the final test for prospective team members is a simulated Die Hard scenario, complete with alien infiltrators and noble (yet harmless) sacrifices. In contrast with most other examples however, Stargate Command is designed and operated with the expectation that hostile forces would frequently attempt to invade, up to including a Self-Destruct Mechanism into the base design from the get go.
• In what is possibly the silliest usage of this one, the Torchwood episode "They Keep Killing Suzie" has the team locked in by a crazy man reciting Emily Dickinson. It makes slightly more sense in context.
  • And in Torchwood: Children of Earth, the base (along with Jack) is completely blown up. Jack does better in the long run.
    • Also in Children of Earth: the government has Thames House, a super-secure building designed to withstand all sorts of attacks by closing down completely. Cool, eh? Except if you invite the enemy in, and they proceed to use these very characteristics to kill everyone in the building, just to make a point.
  • In "End of Days", as part of a plan to release a giant demon, Bilis infiltrates the base's holding cells to kill Rhys.
• Doctor Who:
  • This format was a staple of Patrick Troughton's tenure, to the point where the show's fandom has their own term for this trope: "base under siege" plots. When Jon Pertwee was stranded on Earth, his benefactors at UNIT became harried by alien visitors, too. It later went out of style until the reboot.
  • "The Invasion of Time" revolves around the Doctor fighting an attempted invasion of his home planet, Gallifrey, by the Vardans, pretending to be Les Collaborateurs in order to catch them off guard, defeat them, and unmask the real invaders that they're fronting for, the Sontarans.
  • The TV Movie shows the TARDIS being taken over by the Master and Chang Lee, who he duped into believing that the Doctor is the evil one.
  • In "The Sound of Drums", the Master takes over the TARDIS, then subsequently the flying UNIT headquarters and the entire planet.
  • The entire Earth has been conquered on more than one occasion, especially in later seasons. The Daleks, Cybermen and the Master have all pulled it off, with different levels of success, with the Master arguably coming out on top.
• In season 7 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy's home becomes a literal base for their Super Hero team, complete with The Mole (The First, impersonating one of the Potentials), multiple sieges and examples of set trashing, until the end of the season, which climaxes with the ultimate Trash the Set.
  • This is also what Adam did to The Initiative in season 4.
  • Played With in "Never Leave Me" using the Watchers' Council—-their headquarters are attacked right as Quentin Travers is announcing their plans to go to Sunnydale and help Buffy fight the First.
  • For the first three seasons, the school library was where they always went to research, train, and plan for the upcoming confrontation with evil. Being (1) public space, and (2) the location of the Hellmouth, bad guys came there looking for a fight pretty frequently.
    • Got one of the more low-key, if still very creepy, uses of this trope in the third season finale. The Main Characters are all gathered in the library, discussing how they should bring down the Mayor (the latest Big Bad), when, Speak of the Devil, he comes in through the front door, not to attack them or interrupt their plans in anyway, just to see how they're doing and deliver a few threats while he's in the neighborhood.
  • Buffy's house got trashed by attackers so many times that her mother took to buying the absolute cheapest furniture available. She successfully covered this up until well after her death the Scoobies realized the coffee table was made of balsawood.
• Hard not to spoiler this simply by writing the show, but in Angel the Angel Investigations building is blown up at the end of Season 1, to be replaced by the Hyperion Hotel starting in Season 2.
  • Inverted in the final season, it's more a case of "All Our Base Are Belong to You" — the Angel scooby gang ends up being given the LA branch of Wolfram and Hart to do with as they please.
    • And "Lineage" plays it straight, with Wolfram and Hart being invaded by cyborgs.
  • Lampshaded late in Season 5.
    Angel: Call security, put 'em on red alert. Nobody gets in this building without clearance from me. I want a guard at every entrance, every elevator, every stairwell. Cover the whole building.
    Harmony: (shrugs) OK, but you know how that never works?
    Angel: Harmony!
    Harmony: On it.
• Modified in Battlestar Galactica (2003), mainly the miniseries: the Cylons don't exactly occupy battlestars. Rather, they take over control of them through the computer networks.
  • Season 2 begins with a Cylon boarding party attempting to take over the Galactica, and in season 4, Gaeta's mutiny succeeds in doing just that, giving Adama and Tigh a Die Hard In Space opportunity
  • Played straight with New Caprica, where it's all your planet are belong to us.
• The first season finale of Andromeda featured a variation of this where the heroes basically lost the ship to one of their own; engineer Seamus Harper accidentally reactivated a deactivated version of the ship's AI programme that had been created before a secret mission, causing the old AI to assume that it was still undergoing its original mission and regard the crew as intruders.
• Multiple examples on 24: During the course of eight seasons, attacks on the CTU included: detonation of a bomb, release of a canister of chemical weapon into the ventilation system, assault by a mercenary squad and activation of an EMP weapon. And these were just direct attacks, other minor hindrances to the protagonist consisted of computer viruses, various power plays and internal investigations.
  • Hell, it's so common it became one of the main plot points in the canon video game, which saw several missions devoted to CTU being taken over the antagonists.
  • Due to CTU being decommissioned at the time, season seven saw this happen to the White House instead.
• The Goodies both played this trope straight and parodied it: they had a recurring base which featured almost any room you pleased behind the same two doors (thanks to Chroma Key), a window that turns into a video screen when you pull down the blinds, a huge 1970s computer, and so forth. Graham's Gadgeteer Genius status meant that they also had similar bases on ships or planes in certain episodes.
• A heartbreaking example in Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future: the good guys' home and base of operations, the Power Base, contains not only their living quarters and military facilities, but also vital information regarding human settlements, hidden sanctuaries, and resistance leaders — all of which Lord Dread covets. When he finally succeeds in deciphering the access code to the Power Base's transport gates, he sends Blastarr and a small army of Biodroids to conquer it, all while four members of the Five-Man Band are kept busy elsewhere. In the end, Jennifer "Pilot" Chase is mortally wounded and chooses to detonate the Base's reactor instead of letting its information fall into Dread's hands. And then the series ended.
• In one episode in season one of Alias, SD-6 headquarters is taken over by a team of baddies led by a guest starring Quentin Tarantino.
  • Also, in season 5, APO HQ is bombed by The Mole, Sloane.
• This happens too often in NCIS, whose base of operations is the Navy Yard, DC. You have to wonder how trained badass terrorists like Ari have to go to such trouble to infiltrate the place when any serial killer or stalker can just walk in bold as they please. Possibly lampshaded in one installment when Gibbs wants to shut the base down due to a serial killer's threat:
  Vance: "Gibbs, I don't know if you've noticed, but we run the Navy out of the Navy Yard."
• At the end of Episode 11 of Season 4 of Dexter, the Trinity Killer casually walks into Miami Metro Homicide, peruses the evidence being collected to catch him with bemused glee, and confronts Dexter in his lab, learning his real name and violating a space Dexter considered safe.
  • On a smaller scale than is usual for this trope, Dexter pulls this in most episode with his victim of the week: Taking control of a place they had felt secure, sometimes only symbolically by putting up tokens of their criminal life and asserting dominance, other times literally taking control of their home base (a scrap yard, a cabin in the everglades, a shrink's office, etc.)
• In Flashpoint, an old sergeant of the team came by to visit. Only to take someone hostage when things didn't go like he planned.
• Babylon 5, due to its nature, is threatened in one way or another in almost every episode. However, there are at lest three examples of large-scale invasions by boarding parties.
  • In "Babylon Squared", Sinclair experiences a flash forward of the Shadows invading B5 if Sinclair had stayed on B5 instead of becoming the Minbari Ambassador).
  • In "Severed Dreams," Earthforce likewise boards the station in what becomes a very bloody struggle between them and station security.
  • "A View From The Gallery", which follows two random maintenance personnel as they go about their jobs...in the middle of a battle where aliens board the ship.
• Attempted in Firefly, "Objects in Space", where Jubal Early successfully boards Serenity, knocks out and/or locks most of the crew in their quarters, and holds Simon at gunpoint throughout his complete search of the ship. Unfortunately for him, the ship fights back, when River pulls the same stunt on him.
• Done twice in Merlin, when Morgana takes over the castle of Camelot.
• Kamen Rider Dragon Knight: Tired of being subtle, Wrath and Strike go to the bookstore, hold Lacey and Trent hostage, and then tear the place to pieces in a knock down, drag out fight with Len and Kase. (Technically, the bookstore isn't an offical base but it is treated as one by the four good Kamen Riders (Len, Kase, Kit and Chris)
  • Also suffered minor damage when Kit, Len and Chris nearly fought with Axe and Spear in the bookstore in an earlier episode, but at the end of the series, it was replaced by a better and bigger bookstore.
  • It is also inverted with 'Storming the Castle' at the end of the season, when the Kamen Riders storm Xaviax's mechanical fortress. (though the only thing they really destroy is the shield generator and Xaviax)
  • Kit's apartment, which serves as a 'base' for the Kamen Riders as well, remains intact.
  • Implied to have happened to the Kamen Rider Base on Ventara, Kase says in Swan Song that the survive mode cards were the last thing she grabbed before Xaviax destroyed their base.
• Kamen Rider Blade: Happens at the later part of the first episode, with Kenzaki being called to defend the base of BOARD, the organization he works for, from a monster. Although he did defeat the monster, the base was already thrashed before he could intervene. The organization did retain some functionality after the attack, though.
• The Walking Dead (2010):
  • The season 2 finale has the Greene Family Farm come under attack by a horde of walkers. The farm is overrun and the heroes are forced to flee.
  • In the season 3 episode "Home," the Governor launches an attack on the prison in retaliation for the protagonists' strike on Woodbury two episodes previous. The attack claims the life of Axel and results in attracting a herd of Walkers to the prison.
  • In the Season 3 finale, "Welcome To The Tombs," the Governor leads another attack on the prison, this time a full-scale strike with a whole militia. The heroes lure them into a trap (namely a tunnel full of Walkers), and then drive them off.
  • In the Season 4 mid-season finale, "Too Far Gone," the Governor attacks again with his new group (which happens to include a tank). By the time it's over and done with, the Governor and most of his group are dead, as are Herschel and most of the Prison group, the Prison is in ruins and overrun by Walkers, and the Prison survivors are scattered.
  • In the Season 5 episode "JSS", the Wolves attack Alexandria, forcing their way over and through the defensive walls before brutally killing everyone they can find. The survivors, with Morgan and Carol leading the charge, eventually manage to force them back, but not without massive casualties.
  • In the Season 7 finale "The First Day Of The Rest Of Your Life", the Saviors and the Scavengers move in to take control of Alexandria and crush the burgeoning resistance. They briefly succeed, before Hilltop and the Kingdom swoop in and drive them off.
  • In the Season 8 mid-season finale, "How It's Got To Be", the Saviors assault the Kingdom and Alexandria, seizing control of the former and burning the latter down.
  • In the Season 10 episode "Morning Star", the Whispers began their assault on the communities by marching their horde against Hilltop. This continues into the following episode "What We Become", with the Whisperers managing to burn Hilltop down and scatter the survivors.
  • Double subverted in the Season 10 episode "The Tower". Beta leads the Whisperer horde on Alexandria, only to find that it's been evacuated, leaving no one to attack. But at the end of the episode, they track down the titular "tower", the communities' safe haven at an Abandoned Hospital.
  • At the end of the Season 11 episode "Acts of God", Lance Hornsby forcibly annexes Alexandria and Hilltop as territories of the Commonwealth, while also attacking and subjugating Oceanside.
• CSI: NY has a couple instances:
  • In "Snow Day", a drug lord and his guys storm the lab to reclaim the massive amount of heroin the cops had seized from them.
  • In "Today is Life", the precinct is almost stormed by rioters after a cop shoots an innocent man in a case of mistaken identity, though fortunately not too many get in and there are only minor injuries.
• Warehouse 13:
  • In "Stand," Walter Sykes activates the Warehouse's portal link to the old Regent refuge in order to infiltrate it and both steal the Colodi bracelet and kill Jane Lattimer. This fails, and he dies, but he has the backup plan of bringing an Artifact WMD to destroy the Warehouse (requiring a Reset Button the following season).
  • In "The Truth Hurts," Paracelsus allows himself to be captured as part of a Batman Gambit to completely usurp Mrs. Frederic's position as Caretaker and seize control of the Warehouse. This leads to a horrifying scene of the team being chased out of the Warehouse by lightning strikes and collapsing shelves.
    Paracelsus: This is my house now!
  • Kicked up a notch in the next episode, where Paracelsus meddles with time and makes himself the sole proprietor of the Warehouse starting from the day he was bronzed. Not only does he control the Warehouse, but he's spent 500 years turning it into his own personal laboratory/house of horrors where human experimentation is the go-to method of testing pretty much anything.
• The Blacklist: In "Anslo Garrick," the titular Psycho for Hire leads a crack mercenary team in assaulting the FBI's black site in order to retrieve Reddington for Garrick's revenge ploy.
• Arrow:
  • The League of Assassins, in the episode of the same name, attacks the Canary's clock tower base to try and kill her.
  • In "Time of Death," there's a cyber attack variant, as Tockman hacks the Arrow Cave's computers and makes them self-destruct.
  • "The Man Under The Hood" has Slade easily break into the Arrow Cave and wipe the floor with the team, all so that he can steal the Skeleton Key device. And since he probably could have done so without them ever realizing he was there, it seems likely he was also trying to send a message.
  • In a literal example, in "City of Blood," Isabel Rochev's takeover of Queen Consolidated grants her ownership of all Queen property, including Verdant and by extension the Arrow lair underneath it. And from this episode until the season finale, Isabel and Slade use the QC offices as a base.
  • "Unthinkable" opens with the Mirakuru soldiers attacking the clock tower, which Team Arrow has been using as a makeshift backup base, and are also revealed to have trashed the actual lair.
  • In "Schism," a squadron of Darhk's Ghost mercenaries break into the Arrow Lair and shoot it up to hell before being defeated.
  • At the end of "Dangerous Liaisons," Prometheus launches an EMP attack on the Lair. The following episode, "Underneath," is all about this trapping Oliver and Felicity inside, and their attempts to get out before they suffocate.
  • In "Fallout," Black Siren and her Mooks manage to trick Team Arrow into thinking they're going to attack City Hall, thus leaving the Lair undefended, allowing them to break in to rob and blow up the place. Fortunately, they are mostly prevented from succeeding but are later revealed to have bugged the place in the process.
  • In "The Ties that Bind," Diaz has his men assault the Lair, ultimately torching the place. Later in the same episode, they do the same to the New Recruits' own HQ as well.
• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.:
  • In "0-8-4," Commandant Reyes and her group hijack the Bus and temporarily take the team hostage.
  • In "Yes Men," Lorelei uses the brainwashed Ward and Fitz to take control of the Bus in order to eliminate Lady Sif.
  • In "Turn, Turn, Turn," as a result of events in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, multiple SHIELD facilities are taken over by HYDRA. Additionally, due to each thinking the other is the enemy, Victoria Hand's forces attack Coulson's team on the Bus.
  • This gets followed up on in "Providence," when HYDRA attacks the Fridge, SHIELD's combination maximum security prison/storage facility, freeing all the prisoners as a diversion while they steal all the advanced and dangerous technology for themselves.
  • From the end of "The Only Light in the Darkness" until the end of "Beginning of the End", the team loses the Bus altogether, as it's stolen by Ward.
  • In "Ye Who Enter Here", the Bus gets boarded by HYDRA, who kidnap Skye and Raina.
  • In "One Door Closes," Gonzales's "Real SHIELD" faction attacks and quickly seizes control of the Playground, the headquarters of Coulson's SHIELD network.
  • In the Season 2 finale, "S.O.S," the Inhumans take control of the Illiad, while they use a Trojan Prisoner ploy to give Cal/Mr. Hyde an opportunity to wreck havoc inside the Playground.
  • In "Absolution," a Trojan Horse delivery releases Hive's mutagen into the Playground, transforming numerous agents into brainwashed Primitives, who proceed to wreck havoc.
  • In "Broken Promises", Aida uses Hollywood Hacking to take control of the Playground and marches in, intent on stealing the Darkhold. Coulson and Fitz lampshade how often such attacks happen.
  Fitz: It happens all the bloody time.
  Coulson: At least once a year.
  • In "Self Control," the LMDs of Mace, Coulson, Mack and Fitz take control of the Playground, while telling everyone else that Daisy and Simmons are the LMDs, forcing them to have to fight their way out of the base.
  • In "Option Two," the alien Confederacy assaults the Lighthouse, teleporting a group of Marauders into the facility to kill everyone standing between them and the Gravitonium.
  • In "New Life," the Chronicoms use the information they took from FitzSimmons' minds during their captivity to seize control of the Lighthouse. They then assault the facility, killing all the agents they can find and forcing the remainder to flee.
• Supernatural
  • In the episode "All Hell Breaks Loose, Part One" (S02, Ep21), the Harvelle Roadhouse is burnt to the ground by demons.
  • Likewise in "Hello, Cruel World" (S7, Ep2), the Leviathans destroy Bobby's home.
  • Subverted in "The Prisoner" (S10, Ep22). The Stynes learn where the Men Of Letters bunker is, break in, and douse gasoline everywhere they can. Unfortunately for them Dean returns, and the Mark of Cain makes him stronger and less merciful than ever.
  • In "Nihilism" (S14, Ep10), Michael's monster army assaults the bunker in an attempt to kill all the Hunters gathered there and free Michael from his imprisonment there.
• In Leverage, during Season One's "The First David Job," the team's LA headquarters is invaded by men working for Sterling. And during Season Two's "The Maltese Falcon Job," Nate's apartment/Leverage Inc's base of operations is again invaded by Sterling. And yet again, during Season Four's "The Last Dam Job," Leverage Inc's base is stormed by Dubenich (though they'd already abandoned it) — at least it was someone different this time.
• Tour of Duty: Firebase Ladybird suffers this in the episode "Under Siege". The new company commander brushes off Anderson and Goldman’s concerns about the base defenses, thinking Charlie would be foolish to attack the base. Cut to the VC broadcasting over a loudspeaker that the base is now surrounded, and will attack that night. Oh, not to mention the base is desperately low on ammunition and no ground or air support is available. The VC attack and overrun the base. Only thanks to some clever rigging of some IED's in and around the base perimeter is the platoon able to get the upper hand and drive the enemy back. However, the base is completely destroyed in the process.
• The Librarians 2014:
  • In the pilot, Lamia and her Mooks invade the Library after Cassandra lets them in, stealing both the artifacts they need, as well as many others. In order to prevent a total looting, Charlene and Judson seal the Library in its Pocket Dimension, cutting it off from the rest of the world.
  • At the beginning of "And the Loom of Fate", Dulaque uses a Trojan horse ploy to just walk into the Annex, in order to use the portal that the team created to find the Library in order to access the Loom.
  • In "And The Broken Staff," Prospero and Moriarty infiltrate the Library through the original manuscripts in its reading room, so that they can get to the Tree of Knowledge at the Library's heart.
    Eve: Again?! This is the third time this place has been attacked since I started working here. We need to have a serious talk about the so-called security.
  • In "And the Wrath of Chaos," DOSA raids the Library, during which Apep sneaks in, in order to destroy the Library for good. Both were part of Flynn and Eve's Batman Gambit, however.
• Blindspot: The penultimate episode of Season 2, "Mom," sees Shepherd personally leading an attack on the FBI's New York office. Aside from the direct attack, which is meant to end with the whole building being blown up, this is to give Sandstorm access to the FBI's computer link to Homeland Security's security protocols for other federal buildings, enabling offscreen attacks on a half-dozen other targets. The attack on the New York office is ultimately repelled, and it's revealed that four of the six other attacks were likewise prevented; the other two succeeded in destroying their targets.
• The Gifted (2017):
  • In the Season 1 finale, Sentinel Services tracks down the Mutant Underground's headquarters and assaults it. Ultimately, Andy and Lauren have to combine powers to destroy the building in order to buy everyone time to escape.
  • In the Season 2 episode "calaMity", the Purifiers launch an assault on the Morlocks' sewer lair, having been led to believe that it's a terrorist staging ground, rather than a refugee camp.
• The Outpost:
  • Near the end of Season 1, the Prime Order forces under the command of Ambassador Dred march on Gallwood Outpost and seize control of it.
  • The Season 2 finale sees a much larger Prime Order army personally led by one of The Three assaulting the outpost in order to crush Gwynn's rebellion. The defenders defeat it with aid from the Blackbloods, only for the latter to turn on them and take control of the outpost.
  • Late Season 3 sees Yavalla and the kinj-possessed Gwynn manage to take over the capital without killing a single soldier thanks to infecting them all beforehand. The same episode also sees a squad of Prime Order soldiers fleeing the capital taking over the outpost thanks to their leader possessing One's kinj.
  • In "Where Death Lives", the penultimate episode of Season 3, the United overrun the outpost, quickly reducing the defenders to desperately holing up in the keep.
• Wynonna Earp:
  • Rather literally at the end of the episode "Bury Me With My Guns On", when Bobo buys out the deed to Shorty's, the bar previously owned and operated by the Earps.
  • In "Landslide," a team of human mercenaries hired by Judge Cryderman attack the Earp homestead in order to kill Dolls.
  • During the Season 3 finale, Bulshar and his army assault the homestead to try and wipe the Earps out.
• Wonder Woman (1975): In "IRAC Is Missing", Bernard Havitol climbs through the Air-Vent Passageway in IADC Headquarters to steal IRAC right from the secret government agency's home base. And gets it back as Wonder Woman destroys his base in return.
• Supergirl (2015): In "The Missing Link", the penultimate episode of Season 5, Rama Khan allows himself to be taken prisoner by the DEO, so that he can break free and raid the place for kryptonite. When he's achieved that, he then proceeds to level the building completely.
• Better Call Saul episode "Wine and Roses" opens with a flashback set following the fall of Walter White's meth empire at the end of Breaking Bad where an unidentified group of people with moving trucks raid Saul's mansion taking down Saul's belongings that he bought with drug money. They are not shown to be wearing any police badges or uniforms and even discard a black book of Saul's contacts, so they are most likely repo men sent to seize Saul's belongings to pay his debts owed to a bank stemming from the high cost of the mansion.

Pinballs

• The "Repair the Engines" mission from The Avengers (Zen Studios) has Loki attacking the SHIELD Helicarrier.
  • Similarly, The Avengers (Stern) has "Attack on the Helicarrier", a sub-Wizard Mode based on the same scene.
• This is the theme of the conversion kit Gamatron, which shows a Humongous Mecha attacking some sort of lunar base.

Pro Wrestling

• The most notable example of the post-territorial era is TNA, who love to use both the invasion angle and the corporate takeover angle. In June 2014, someone decided to do the math and found that from its inception in 2002 up till then TNA had spent over 55% of their twelve-year existence under siege by a hostile force. And after this figure was put out, there was another evil takeover of the Impact Zone.
• IWA Puerto Rico had this when Ray González was revealed as The Mole, still holding onto his shares in the Puerto Rican version World Wrestling Council and planning to use them to recreate the old Capitol Sports Promotions using IWA PR's assets. Ironically, González would become a hero to this branch of the International Wrestling Association when his own take over was derailed by an off-island invasion by then NWA World Champion and TNA Wrestling founder Jeff Jarrett.
• WWC had this when Victor Jovica joined Poder Supremo, who then allied with invaders from other promotions for good measure. Then it happened again after the Carlito Caribbean Company turned out to be a hostile takeover rather than a new promotion.
• The ongoing angle of Fighting Opera Hustle was the threat of Takada's Monster Army, who eventually did take over the promotion when Generalissmo Takada just decided to buy it.
• In 2015, Suzuki gun came frighteningly close to taking complete control of Pro Wrestling NOAH. Mainly this was because NOAH's locker room mostly regarded them as just another collection of opponents to wrestle, which resulted in them getting systematically destroyed by the invaders. Other visiting factions such as ROH Tag Team War Machine recognized Suzuki gun for what they were but didn't fair any better in the end.
• Savio Vega was already a partial owner of The World Wrestling League due to its less experienced founder, Richard Negrin's, failure to read the fine print, but the truth was he wanted his own company, IWA Puerto Rico, back. Vega and the former IWA PR talents managed to successfully takeover WWL's television show High Voltage and rename it Total Impacto after IWA PR's old flagship show before IWA and WWL formally split and IWA was revived.

Tabletop Games

• The Freedom Tower environment in Sentinels of the Multiverse, which involves the villains raiding the Freedom Five's own headquarters and results in battles in various rooms throughout the building.

Theatre

• In Henry V, the English come back to their base after kicking French butt at Agincourt to discover that some French knights had slipped out of the battle and killed all of the guards left to watch over the baggage train. Hal gets royally ticked off: "I was not angry since I came to France!"

Video Games

• Zero Wing: The intro is the Trope Namer, which begins with an organization (or person?) known as "CATS" taking over the bases of the player's organization and attacking the ship the player is stationed in.
• Half-Life 2 features this.
  • No less than twenty minutes after Gordon Freeman reaches Black Mesa East, the well-equipped and well-hidden resistance base outside of City 17, the Combine fly in with their helicopters and start shelling the place with headcrab canisters. The base is lost, and the survivors relocate to the White Forest Base, where, incidentally, the same thing happens... only this time, Gordon isn't cut off from the fray. Guess who wins.
  • Quite a few resistance bases are attacked, and some destroyed, later on through the games. You get to explore and scavenge most of them.
• Freelancer, it's safe to say, beats this trope to death, then reanimates its corpse as a zombie and does it again. Almost every friendly base, capital ship or space station Trent steps onto in the story mode is likely to come under heavy assault within minutes. And he visits a lot of them.
• Suikoden V:
  • Exploited, where letting the enemy succeed in invading your base without any resistance is the correct choice, as it's part of a Batman Gambit by The Strategist to wipe them out with minimal losses.
  • Played mostly straight at the game's beginning, where, after one extended playable flashback and a few missions about the kingdom, the heroes return to Sol Falena's palace, only for it to be attacked by the Godwin family and their ninjas. A possible subversion occurs, however, in that not only did the heroes suspect something was coming and prepare for it (including by dosing themselves with antidotes before the feast because they knew full well there'd be sleeping drugs in the food), but actually looked like they were going to win against the attack. But then the Queen's mad with power moment got out of control, as she went from vaporising the attacking ninjas to reflexively vaporising her husband...Things just went more and more wrong from there.
• Mega Man indulges in this frequently:
  • While most games in the Mega Man (Classic) and Mega Man X series end with the titular robot invading Dr. Wily or Sigma's fortress to take him out, Mega Man X3 started with an attack on the Maverick Hunter Headquarters.
  • Dr. Light's lab in Mega Man 7 also gets attacked after Bass reveals his true intentions.
  • The first game also had a mission where you had to repel two attacks on the Resistance Base.
  • Prometheus and Pandora lead an assault on the Guardians airship during Mega Man ZX.
  • Glyde's attack on Nino Island in Mega Man Legends.
  • SciLab, in Mega Man Battle Network has awful, awful network security. Case in point, it happens twice during Mega Man Battle Network 5: Team Colonel and Team ProtoMan, at the beginning when the Big Bad walks right in, and later an assault of SciLab's network forces the heroes to find a temporary hideout, in a back room of Mr. Higsby's shop.
  • In Mega Man Star Force 3, WAXA headquarters gets assaulted by an army of cloned alien Hard Light beings.
• No One Lives Forever 2 features a sneak attack on the good guy base... by mimes. With guns.
• The video game adaptation of The World Is Not Enough has James Bond fighting terrorists that invaded the MI6 headquarters, even though this never happened in the movie (the HQ was attacked by a remote bomb, but of course you can't shoot that so that makes for bad gameplay).
  • Bizarrely they did do this in the next film but it was a VR simulation.
• Perfect Dark features a level where once again, the enemy sneak-attacks the good guy HQ.
• Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue have its second-to-last stage, "Lightspeed Rescue!" where the ranger headquarters gets captured by Queen Bansheera and her minions while you're busy dealing with Olympius.
• Happens in Freedom Fighters (2003): by the middle of the campaign, your base is taken over, and you have to find another place where you can run La Resistance..
• The first hour or so of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption consists of a Space Pirate attack on both the ship you're on, and the base on the planet you're orbiting.
• Occurs in the Command & Conquer games several times, in which Kane hacks into the player's character communications to taunt him following an attack on the good guys. It's most apparent in the Tiberian Sun GDI intro, which is eerily similar to the intro of Zero Wing. Can also literally happen in gameplay — watch out for those Engineers.
• This occurs in one of the later Gamma Campaign missions of Warzone 2100. NEXUS, the Big Bad intruder virus created by disgruntled Mad Scientist Dr. Reed hacks into the Project's Synaptic Links (which were also developed by Reed) and begins taking control of the player's units and structures.
• Plenty of times in the Halo franchise; the novels even have the UNSC use the code "blood arrow" to indicate that all friendly positions on a planet have been overrun:
  • The second level of Halo 3 is a textbook example of this, and in true Bungie fashion you traverse the majority of the base three times. Still fun though.
  • Also happens in Combat Evolved and Halo 2, with the Pillar of Autumn and the Cairo defense station, respectively.
  • In fact, the examples in Halo 2 and Halo 3 are just smaller battles in the greater battle for the Earth itself. Also, the Pillar of Autumn moment of Halo 1 takes place after you had already run away from an earlier All Your Base Are Belong To Us moment on the planet Reach.
  • Also happens with Sword Base in Halo: Reach twice before the planet itself is glassed. And you do get to set up the bomb the second time.
  • In Halo 4, the UNSC Infinity has to fight off enemy borders in both the main campaign and Spartan Ops.
  • In Halo 5: Guardians, Fireteam Osiris has to help evacuate the Arbiter after the Covenant lay siege to his forces holed up in Nuusra's Elder Council Chamber.
• Bungie's earlier Marathon series starts off with you aiding in the takeover of an alien ship during their invasion of your colony. The sequel has you performing a planetary invasion of your own from it until the ship is taken over by a hax0ring AI, and you instead flee to a makeshift planetary base camp... which is then belonged to walking bombs disguised as humans.
• Star Trek: Elite Force and its sequel have levels like this, on the Voyager and Enterprise, repectively. In the second game, you even have to fight off enemies on the outside of the ship.
• Mass Effect:
  • Mass Effect had an interesting twist, with the base in question also being The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
  • Mass Effect 2 had another variation: All Your Ship Are Belong To Us. Twice. And the first one completely destroyed the original Normandy, and the second almost completely wiped out the crew of the Normandy SR2.
    • The final outcome, depending on your last decision, is either All Your Collector Base Are Destroyed By Shepard, or All Your Collector Base Are Belong To Cerberus.
  • And now, to complete the trifecta, Mass Effect 3's trailer has All Your Earth Are Belong To The Reapers.
    • And later in the game All Your Citadel Are Belong To The Reapers. Again.
• Neverwinter Nights 2 has an entire quest arc dedicated to such antics: should you choose to aid the City Watch, it falls to you and your compadres to expel sundry unsavory characters from the Docks district. If it were anything other than your own city it would be more like Storming the Castle.
  • And then there is the scene in between acts 1 and 2 where the Githyanki storm the Sunken Flagon and kidnap Shandra (again)
  • There's also the assault on Crossroad Keep.
• Lunicus had you and your buddies striking out from the titular hidden moonbase to fight an alien occupation of earth. It gets invaded later in the game, allowing you to hijack one of their boarding craft to pull an Independence Day.
• The last mission in Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix takes place at the Lockhart Shop HQ, which has been taken over by the main terrorist organization, Prometheus. Strong, often armored opposition, and the expected disarray of a building taken by force, including fires, collapsed masonry, insurmountable barricades and a general lack of working lighting make it the hardest set of levels in the game.
• Irrational Games' Freedom Force features giant robots attempting to destroy the Freedom Fortress, and a successful invasion of Giant Ants.
• For the first half of Silent Hill 4, your apartment is a haven where you can heal and rearm. In the second half of the game, it is overrun by ghosts who can hurt you by proximity, and who will contribute to giving you a worse game ending if you don't clear them out.
• Dragon Quest:
  • Dragon Quest II: The kingdom of Moonbrooke is attacked by the Children of Hargon at the start of the game as a show of Hargon's power. The Prince of Midenhall and his cousin, the Prince of Cannock, visit the castle, which is now infested with monsters such as Smogs and Corpse Corporals.
  • Dragon Quest IV: Alena's home of Zamoksva is crawling with monsters such as Pocus Poppets and Rhinothropes by the time she and the Chosen revisit it in Chapter 5. It's also where Balzack, Maya and Meena's Arch-Enemy, was reassigned to by the Marquis de Leon after his failure at the end of Chapter 4, though the monsters under his command don't like him due to his arrogance.
  • Dragon Quest VI: The Cloudsgate Citadel is conquered by Dhuran, one of the Four Dread Fiends under his master the Archfiend Mortamor, who has converted it into the Stormsgate Citadel to deter intruders. Unlike other examples, though, you don't have to fight any monsters in the citadel itself since Dhuran considers the Prince of Somina and his allies guests.
  • Dragon Quest VIII: Castle Trodian is engulfed in thorny vines by Rhapthorne's magic from his imprisonment in the Godbird Spectre after Dhoulmagus steals it. Halfway through the game, the party, including Trode, visit it for information on how to obtain the Moonshadow Harp, while having to fight monsters such as Infernal Armours, Hunter Mechs, Cureslimes, and Dragonthorns who have made it their home.
  • Dragon Quest XI: Heliodor Castle after the fall of Yggdrasil is infested with monsters under the command of Tyraint, one of the Spectral Sentinels, and Jasper, the Supreme Commander of the Spectral Sentinels who send wave after wave of them to attack The Last Bastion. In a form of irony, the Luminary, now allied with Hendrik, enters the castle via the same way he and Erik escaped.
• Final Fantasy:
  • In Final Fantasy VI, Kefka's battalion invades Figaro Castle and sets it on fire after Edgar refuses to hand over Terra. But then Edgar, Locke, and Terra escape on chocobos while the castle itself sinks into the sand, ejecting the invaders and thoroughly humiliating Kefka.
  • In Final Fantasy VIII, enemy forces invade and conquer Irvine's home, Galbadia Garden, then use it to do the same to Balamb Garden. After many difficult battles in the halls of his own home, and successfully fending off the invaders, Squall leads his SeeD classmates to counterattack and retake Galbadia Garden.
  • In Final Fantasy IX, every city that is allied with or is home to the heroes is either conquered or downright annihilated by Queen Brahne of Alexandria.
  • The Al-Bhed's Home in Final Fantasy X is overrun by the Guado and the Church of Yevon. Cid, the very man who built Home, is forced to rain missiles down on it to prevent the enemy from giving chase once evacuation is complete.
  • Final Fantasy XI has Besieged, wherein the city of Al Zahbi is, from time to time, overrun by beastmen. There's also an infamous 3-month period where the cities in "Wings of The Goddess" were faced with constant invasions because the enemies in Campaign were so damn strong it was nearly impossible to hold any areas so city invasions wouldn't happen. Additionally, in one scene during the Battle of Jeuno mission arc, the Allied Forces of Altana are presented with an ultimatum from the Beastmen Confederacy. The orc presenting the surrender treaty says outright "You press seal here. Then all your Jeuno are belong to us". After the player and other npc heroes break up the meeting, that same orc yells "You have no chance to survive! Make your time!" One wonders what the game's japanese script had in the same scene.
• In Knights of the Old Republic, the Jedi Enclave on Dantooine is razed by Darth Malak's forces after you complete three planets.
  • In Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, the player's Cool Starship, the Ebon Hawk, gets taken over on several occasions. The first time is after Peragus, when it's stolen by Atris's handmaidens. After that, there's two more — on Nar Shaddaa, it gets stormed by Slavers for being parked in their space, and after the player moves more than one quarter up or down the Karma Meter (and you've completed Telos), a young Sith Apprentice sneaks in and incapacitates your party only to pull a Heel–Face Turn once you defeat her.
• The Legend of Tian-ding have this occurring in the last few stages, when the Mansion 28 - headquarters of the local La Résistance - gets raided by General Shimada's men. It turns out the resistance leader who's allegedly the game's Big Good is The Mole.
• In StarCraft, the Zerg can infect a Terran Command Center, seize control of it, and use it to produce Infected Terran units.
  • Not to mention the big plot points where the Zerg take over, oh, let's see: Chau Sara (to start the game), Mar Sara, Tarsonis, Aiur, Char, Antiga (Nobody remembers Antiga...) Not to mention the Jacobs Installation (All Your Base's Secret Intel Is Belong To Us), the Amerigo (All Your Spaceship's More Secret Intel Is Belong To Kerrigan), and one incident in the novels where Raynor shipjacks General Duke himself, ending up with the Hyperion.
  • The eminently quotable Michael Liberty had this to say about this state of affairs:
    Michael Liberty: We had the advantages of interior lines of supply (that's military for "surrounded") and native terrain (that's military for "we're fighting them in our living rooms").
• World of Warcraft rewards players for successfully attacking the opposite faction's capitol cities and killing their leaders. Opposite faction players will generally organize a defense, resulting in an epic battle.
• Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, if the player character is a Fighter, and takes up responsibility of D'Arnise Hold afterwards, he has to prevent one of these.
  • Come to think of it, this happens beforehand when you liberate it from the bleedin' Trolls.
  • PC Mage also gets one of these, thanks to Amn's Mage-hating society.
• Bound by Blades have this happening after the third boss. You destroy the monster and triumphantly return to your village... only to realize it has been razed to the ground, the citizens gone and your mentor missing. You then set off to the next destination, Fangfate City, and your adventure's next stage.
• Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal features Dr. Nefarious's new-And-improved army attacking the Star Ship Phoenix.
  • And in the final level, Ratchet and Clank get their revenge by infiltrating Dr. Nefarious' base. All alone, though (although Captain Qwark shows up for a bit in the end).
• Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War the necessary-to-spoiler-tag scene where your new base is sunk by two sub-launched missiles. Before that, the first three levels of the game are the build-up to and execution of an attack on your first base. Later on, the bad guys (who weren't actually bad) also attempt a seaborne invasion.
  • Zero tops this with the XB-0, a Belkan superweapon attacking and disabling your base
• In the final SWAT mission of Police Quest: SWAT 2, the game's Western Terrorists have invaded Metro Station, killing one of the major NPCs during a cutscene and putting the Chief of Police's life in peril.
• Tenchu: The Azuma village in part 2. Gohda castle got torched in parts 2 and 4.
• At the beginning of The Witcher, the witchers' castle is attacked by bandits. While they get their asses kicked, they do manage to steal the secret witcher-making potion.
• Inverted in the penultimate scenario of Super Robot Wars Z. You've just taken over the Big Bad's Dragon's Evil Tower of Ominousness in the previous mission, and now you have to fight off the forces sent to take it back.
• Allowing the enemy to reach your starting stronghold in the Ogre Battle games is an instant Game Over.
  • Not so much in the March of the Black Queen - you lose the level and take a big reputation hit, but you can try again with no other consequences. The only Game Over condition is the death of the main character.
• Lunar Knights. Eddie and Ginny take up the role of CATS and assault the Guild's base in Old Culiacan in the wake of Margrave Rymer seeing the Purifex Cannon in operation from the business end. Save Ernest and Kay, the Guild evacuates to the inn and, later, to their old ops base. The vampires are on the defensive from there on out, so no repeats.
• One of the final missions in Dungeon Keeper 2's campaign has an interesting version. You are set up against the goodly King's right-hand man Lord Pureheart and his map-spanning fortress with an overpowering number of guards and other heroes only a single alarm away from your Dungeon Heart. Your base is tucked in a very meager niche of diggable rock to prevent traditional means of building up power and your resources in general are limited. The correct strategy is to slowly and quietly block off (with the help of the just-unlocked Secret Door) and take over the castle, starting from the outlying torture dungeons and storerooms while picking off and converting the patrolling guardsmen to your side one at a time. Ideally, after the entire castle has been silently subverted, the siege ends with the former heroes launching a massive attack into the Lord's throne room at the very core of the castle. Surprise!
• Red Faction:
  • Happens offscreen in the original Red Faction. While Parker is in Ultor's space station taking down the laser defense grid, the mercenaries raid the Red Faction base and capture Eos.
  • In the middle of a mission, Red Faction: Guerrilla pulls a swerve: without warning the mission is aborted and you have to race to save a safehouse from a full-on assault. The safehouse is wrecked and your commander is killed.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Hyrule Castle has been taken over by the forces of evil a total of 4 times yet, twice by Ganondorf, once by Vaati in The Minish Cap, also once by A Link to the Past's Agnahim. It might have something to do with the fact that Hyrulean Guards tend to be morons. Notably Averted in Spirit Tracks, despite the setup being perfect for it, with the Princess being invisible and all; then there's also Chancellor Cole who plotted his master's return from in the castle.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: The trope is taken to its logical conclusion halfway through the game, when you come across Hyrule Castle, which was frozen in time at the exact moment it was falling to an invading army; all their base were in a perpetual state of belonging to Ganon for the last several centuries.
• In Dead Rising, the zombies start to encroach on your safe zones, appearing in the warehouse and elevator in greater numbers as the game proceeds. Following the main plot missions will eventually lead to commandos taking over the mall and your original safe room. Though Frank inverts this by taking over the enemy's secret hiding place and hiding there for the remainder of the game.
• In Super Robot Wars Compact, Jaburo gets attacked by Emperor Muge Zolbados in Scenario 21: God Bless Dancougar
• Oni has this happen in its 6th chapter, just after losing Muro's trail in chapter 5.
• In the endgame of Dragon Age: Origins, the Darkspawn attack Redcliffe and Denerim. You get to Redcliffe just in time to save the castle and everyone in it. Denerim isn't so lucky. By the time your forces get there, the Darkspawn have already established a foothold in the burning city and presumably killed everyone who couldn't escape in time.
  • At the end of Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening, the darkspawn attack the Grey Warden stronghold at Vigil's Keep and the city of Amaranthine.
  • Halfway through Dragon Age: Inquisition, your base at Haven is assaulted by the Big Bad Corypheus (his first appearance, not counting a visible outline earlier) with his army of Red Templars and his personal dragon. Despite all your efforts, Haven falls, and you end up going for a Delaying Action, while the survivors flee through snowy mountains. Fortunately, Solas ends up leading them to an even better fortress at Skyhold, which becomes your new base. Unlike Haven, you can actually improve Skyhold and make it more defensible (besides already being a castle with high walls atop a mountain peak).
• MechWarrior 4: Black Knight features a nasty one. While you're out on patrol after taking a big bite out of the enemy war machine, House Steiner betrays your mercenary outfit and launches a surprise attack on the base. In the ensuing chaos, Colonel Badass and Mission Control are both killed, many survivors are taken prisoner, and you pretty much only make it out of there with a few civilian trucks plus whatever gear your Humongous Mecha squad had equipped at the time.
  • Theoretically any mission in MechWarrior 3 can become this if you position your Mobile Field Base too close to the bad guys.
• Chapter 1 of AdventureQuest Worlds' main storyline involves the good kingdom of Swordhaven coming under attack by the Shadowscythe Empire's army of the undead. And then Drakath, the leader of the forces of Chaos, interrupts the battle between Good and Evil, kills Sepulchure, the former leader of the Shadowscythe, blasts down Shadowfall, and then he threatens to destroy everything that both Good and Evil love and end the world in chaos and destruction.
• Samurai Warriors: The first game in particular had castle sieges, parts of the game where you infiltrate the enemy stronghold and kill the enemy. This was not a popular gameplay mechanic and so the castles became part of the main war map itself, and depending on whose story battle you were following you had to either invade or repel an invasion on your home fortress. The most iconic of this is the siege of Honnoji, in which Mitsuhide Akechi turns against Oda Nobunaga,
• In AdventureQuest Worlds, the main villain of its recent Skyguard storyline is a guy named Master, who plans to infiltrate the Skyguard to cause enough mayhem to make Drakath decide to make him the next Lord of Chaos. Shortly after the Skyguard induction ceremony ends, an attack is launched against the Skyguard Academy, and the academy is being invaded by Chaobolds, Bronze Sky Pirate Draconians, and an Inbunche waiting at the academy's cafeteria. And that's not all - Invidia, one of the Skyguard's newest recruits, could actually be The Dragon to Master, the Dreamweaver, in disguise. They do look familiar, after all...
• In Duke Nukem Zero Hour, the Player Headquarters is invaded by the aliens in the Bad Future.
• This happens twice in Bastion. The first time is when Zulf learns the origin of the Calamity and goes on a rampage in the Bastion before leaving. The second is when he sends his fellow Ura to invade the Bastion near the end of the game.
• The Reconstruction, towards the end. The world is devastated by floods and a volcanic eruption, then the Big Bad destroys what's left. As a result, Wadassia, the city where most of the cast hails from and the main base of their operations, is reduced to ruins, in addition to every other city on the planet. Since the main character is heavily devoted to Wadassia, this also causes him to have a major Freak Out.
• Assassin's Creed series loves this trope:
  • Assassin's Creed: Templars lay siege on Masayaf very early in the game.
  • Assassin's Creed II: The game ends with Vidic's men storming the Hideout.
  • Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood: The main story begins when Cesare sieges Monteriggioni.
• Happens in Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds.
  Martian Elder: "A rapid offensive to (the humans') social and economic heart should prevent any significant opposition."
  • The Martians actually do this twice. The first time (a direct assault on London, shown during the intro movies) it backfires because they underestimate the humans' firepower. They then change their landing site to Scotland, which works much better - whichever side you play the campaign as, the Martians will be in control of most of Scotland by the end of the first week or two.
• Jonathan Kane: The Protector have the titular character and his Love Interest, Jennifer, taking cover in the former's safehouse. It gets raided by enemy mooks the very next morning, with Jennifer captured alive and Jonathan shot and left for dead - he needs to reach his emergency medikit while suffering an Agonizing Stomach Wound, within 40 seconds or it's a Non-Standard Game Over.
• Deus Ex Universe:
  • Deus Ex starts on Liberty Island, UNATCO headquarters, which is being occupied by NSF forces, although the actual base was not captured.
  • Twice at the beginning of Deus Ex: Invisible War. First the Tarsus base in Chicago gets destroyed by a Templar Grey Goo bomb, then the Seattle base comes under attack by the Order.
  • Deus Ex: Human Revolution starts with the Sarif building being attacked by hostile mercenaries and supersoldiers.
• The Game of the Ages: You should have suspected this would happen as soon as you got a look at all the castle's defenses.
• At the beginning of Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter, Roger's ship is captured by the Sariens, all crew members killed except for him, the Star Generator stolen, and the Self-Destruct Mechanism activated. At the end, you infiltrate and detonate the Star Generator on their own ship.
• Happens towards the end of I Miss the Sunrise. The Inquiry, the spaceship that serves as the home base for your crew and as the Hub Level for gameplay purposes, is destroyed by the Big Bad in the final episode.
• In Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!, once Ripto takes over an area in Avalar, a tapestry with his image is hanged out on the wall.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • In Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, Wario has taken over Mario's castle while he was off saving Daisy in the first Super Mario Land.
  • This happens to Wario himself in Wario Land II - neglect to wake up at the beginning of the game and the invading pirates throw you out the window and take over your castle, forcing you to reclaim it.
  • Happens in New Super Mario Bros. U, where instead of Peach getting taken to Bowser's Castle, Mario and co. are flung out of her castle and have to make their way back there. By the time you make it back to the castle at the end of the game, Bowser and the Koopalings have already taken it over and turned it into the game's Lethal Lava Land world.
  • There are also two instances where Bowser has pulled her entire castle out of the ground and into space.
  • The Shroobs do this to Peach's Castle in Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, turning it into their alien stronghold.
  • Fawful really goes all the way in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story; taking over both Peach's and Bowser's respective castles after putting both out of commission.
  • In Paper Mario: The Origami King, King Olly and his army got their grip on both Peach's and Bowser's castles, relocating the former atop a volcano and occupying the latter after it crash-landed on Shangri-Spa.
• In both the Advance Wars and Fire Emblem franchises, your main goal is to seize the enemy's main base of operations. The enemy can also win this way in the former.
• Villages in Battle for Wesnoth. Trivial to take over when unoccupied, a pain to claim if held by a hostile unit (you need to get rid of the defender first, who'll probably enjoy a cover bonus and heal between turns while your attackers don't, and then still move a unit of your own in after that battle is finally over), and yet absolutely vital to each side's ability to recruit, support, and heal its units.
• The second-to-last mission of the Operation Final Fury plot in X3: Terran Conflict has you called back to base with little ceremony. You enter the base's sector to see an enormous Kha'ak warfleet doing its level best to kill everything in sight, including the base.
• Buck Bumble has the titular bee going out and destroying Herd satellite installations that would let the Herd find out where the Resistance base was. The very next mission is the base calling Buck back frantically, because the Herd found them anyway and overran it.
• Fallout:
  • In the bad ending of the first Fallout, the Super Mutants take over the player character's vault, in addition to converting him/her into a Mutant themselves.
  • During the Waters of Life quest in Fallout 3, the Enclave storms the Jefferson Memorial and seizes Project Purity, jumpstarting the game's second act. Earlier, as the evil solution to the Tenpenny Tower sidequest, you can let the Ghouls into the building to massacre the residents. You can also arrange to have them move in, but they eventually backstab and slaughter the residents anyway. You and the Brotherhood also do this to the Enclave, twice if you have the Broken Steel DLC.
  • In Fallout 4, the Minutemen and the Railroad both suffered this in their backstory. The former had it happen twice, first being chased out of The Castle by Mirelurks, then massacred in Quincy by the Gunners, while the latter were rooted out of the Switchboard by the Institute and forced to relocate to the crypts of the Old North Church.
• This happens in Star Fox 64 if the player takes a route through Sector Z. The Star Fox team's mothership, Great Fox, is attacked by a swarm of enemy fighters as well as several missiles.
• In Touhou Hisouten ~ Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, an incredibly weak and localized earthquake destroyed the Hakurei shrine, a building that not only is the main character's residence but is also built upon the barrier that separates Gensokyo from the outside world (so it's actually very important). This makes the heroine going mad at it, and she goes out for the culprit, a celestial being named Tenshi Hinanawi that purposedly caused the incident because she was bored and wanted someone to fight with (and she gets kicked a lot by nearly any character in the game, excluding Remilia Scarlet because she couldn't go out due to the inevitable exposure to the Sunlight). Tenshi is eventually forced to rebuild the shrine, but Yukari Yakumo destroys it again because she noticed that Tenshi rebuilt it to please her own tastes. Then, the shrine is rebuilt a second time by Suika Ibuki, with the help of some Tengus.
• You could probably make a drinking game out of how many times this happens to the average character in Star Wars: The Old Republic. (The nature of the phasing system is such that the easiest places for designers to put a climactic fight is the enemy's base, or the ally's base.) The most outstanding example is probably the Empire's Children of the Emperor, who manage to take over a staggering number of Republic bunkers, labs, strongholds, and so forth, usually by invitation. Naturally, the players are the only ones competent enough to get them back.
  • The Korriban Incursion and Attack on Tython Flashpoints allow player characters to both invoke this trope and have it invoked on them, thanks to some clever re-skinning of two starter planets.
• In the two Eador games, if a player loses the battle for a shard they're trying to claim, they don't get the benefits of that shard. Simple. If their homeshard is invaded by another player (or vice versa) and the owner is defeated, they're utterly destroyed and cast into chaos. You do get various benefits when fighting on your home shard, though.
• Chapter 15 of Wolfenstein: The New Order. The area is in flames, your comrades have been captured, and Klaus and J/Tekla wind up dead in the process.
• In Stage 4 of Thunder Force VI, the Galaxy Federation's home planet is under attack by the ORN Empire. You must get in and stop the ORN Empire from destroying the planet.
• Batman: Arkham City has a series of Downloadable Content challenge maps that simulate a theoretical attack on Wayne Manor. Later games establish a precedent for this. Thanks a lot, Bane.
• Combat Instinct's second level involves the Gnork breaking into your destroyer. 3 has the Hrumians assault Hivezopolis.
• Between Flashback and its sequel, Fade to Black, during Conrad's time as a Human Popsicle, the Not Quite Dead Morphs take over Earth.
• Happens at the start of the third playthrough in NieR: Automata - and it's permanent. A machine-made virus infects all of YoRHa, including the Commander and the Operators, and ultimately destroys the Bunker. From that point on, the protagonists' Resurrective Immortality is nullified: dying immediately results in a Game Over.
• Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon's final mission takes place during an attack on the Royal Parliament by the Procyons, who had managed to reach the Parliament with no resistance due to most of the Royal Navy being sent to the frontier to defend against the Ironclads and because the Terran Empire believed that the Procyon fleet was there for diplomatic reasons.
• In Descent 3's fifth mission, the Collective Earth Defense, believing the Material Defender and the Red Acropolis Research Team to be terrorists, attack their base on Mars, forcing them to evacuate.
• Contra Force actually has its final level be the C-Force/Blue Group's headquarters, which comes under attack by a squad of D.N.M.E. terrorists with its leader at the helm. Needless to say, you get to succeed in fending them off.
• In Fe's penultimate act, the Silent Ones invade the Hub Level and capture the Elder Tree.
• In Silent Storm: Sentinels, after you discover that the leader of the Sentinels is actually a high-ranking member of Thor's Hammer, you are forced to lead the defense of the Sentinels' HQ from a powerful THO attack. While the base is prepared for defense, with trenches and machinegun nests (you even have Red Shirts to help you), there are lots of enemies, and they just keep coming. Hopefully, you already have some Panzerkleins of your own to counter the enemy's, or it will be a short battle.
• Sakura Wars:
  • In chapter 6 of the first game, Crimson Miroku invades the Imperial Theater so that the Hive of Darkness will cause chaos in Tokyo.
  • In Sakura Wars 2: Thou Shalt Not Die, Keigo Kyogoku has Shiro Amakusa and the Imperial Japanese Army stage a coup d'etat and invade the Imperial Theater, temporarily forcing the Imperial Combat Revue into hiding.
  • In chapter 4 of Sakura Wars (2019), Yaksha launches a full-scale assault on the Grand Imperial Theater.
• Saints Row:
  • The penultimate mission of the Ronin arc in Saints Row 2 has the Ronin raid the Saints hideout, with Kazuo at the helm. He survives the attack, however.
  • The last mission of the first STAG arc in Saints Row: The Third has STAG launch an attack on the Saints HQ. It ends with STAG trashing the penthouse. The penthouse still remains usable afterward, however.
  • The final arc of the reboot has this happen to the Saints HQ after the player gets betrayed by the Nahualli and buried alive, during which the Nahualli and his goons attacked the HQ and kidnapped your friends, leaving many dead Saints in his wake. This all happens offscreen, but the player only gets to see the aftermath of it.
• Happens in the optional final chapter of Pathfinder: Kingmaker: the Lantern King takes over your capital, and you have to reassemble your scattered forces to take it back.
• Grand Theft Auto:
  • Grand Theft Auto: Vice City's final mission involves the Vercetti Estate coming under attack by the Forelli Mob.
  • Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas's "House Party" mission has Grove Street come under attack by the Ballas. This occurs early in the game.
  • In Grand Theft Auto V, the mission "Meltdown" has the home of Michael, one of the three protagonists, come under attack by Merryweather mercenaries. The home survives the attack, but Michael's family moves out once again.
• Splinter Cell: Blacklist has a mission where the Paladin lands in Yucatan and comes under attack by the Engineers. The attackers are fought off successfully, but Sadiq uploads a virus onto the plane.
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II has a late game mission where the U.S.S. Barack Obama comes under assault by Menendez's mercenaries, due to Menendez allowing himself to be Captured on Purpose. Depending on the player's choices throughout the game, the ship is either destroyed by the mercenaries, or saved by the Chinese.
• Doom Eternal has this occur after you kill the final Hell Priest. The Khan Makyr takes over the Fortress Of Doom's computer and releases the demons that happened to be imprisoned.
• Fable: The climax has the Big Bad attack and inflict a collective Curb-Stomp Battle on the Heroes' Guild where the protagonist was raised, forcing him to catch up and stop him from claiming an apocalyptic artifact. Their Final Boss fight is in the room where the protagonist was first named a Hero.
• Middle-earth: Shadow of War ends the first chapter with the Nazgul conquering Minas Ithil. Talion spends the rest of the game paying them back by taking over Sauron's many strongholds with his own army of brainwashed orcs.
• XCOM:
  • The Base Defense in the series is one of the more harrowing missions there is, especially if you didn't properly design your base. Not only does failing or quitting that mission mean you've lost the base (and if that was your last one, the game as well), but you lose any facility that was heavily damaged in the firefight as well.
  • Don't forget that you're often fighting terror units, who, by and large, are fearsome opponents, and have a battleship load of supporting aliens, blaster bombs, and psionic attacks they're all too eager to use. To make things worse, you often have to fight with a cobbled-together band of scrubs with only beginner-level rifles and pistols, instead of the squads you've probably invested blood and tears training — all thanks to quirks of how the game works.
  • The 2012 reboot, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, brought back the base attack in the Enemy Within expansion. Since the player only had one base, it automatically used the best troops available. However, they would still be frequently left with only basic weapons and armor if the player isn't careful. And once again, the mission is all-or-nothing: even the Ironman mode will let players retry if they fail.
  • XCOM 2 starts with this, with the survivors only managing to re-emerge with skeleton crew 20 years after as the "Avenger" in which, after the Commander has been rescued, has to be rebuilt. Later, it has an even more dramatic version of this with Avenger defense missions. After a UFO uses an EMP weapon and a 'spike' to ground the Avenger, your soldiers have to mount a desperate defense to prevent hostiles from boarding the Avenger, while destroying the spike. Then you have to manually evacuate everyone who participated. This is even more dramatic because, due to the nature of the mission, you can use wounded soldiers. Additionally, the arbitrary headcount goes straight out the window; every few turns, Central will deploy another soldier from within the Avenger to help ensure that the mission succeeds.
• In several of the Ys games, the game's main town gets occupied by the enemy and its residents captured.
• In Road 96 each successful route passes through a cave behind a waterfall, where the hitcher can build a cairn and rest before making their escape attempt. On the final run, the cairn has been toppled and the camping equipment has been set on fire. Cops will arrest the hitcher when they try to leave the cave, triggering the final sequence.
• Time Slip have its opening cinematics depicting the obliteration of the human resistance base by the hostile Tirmatian aliens, while your player hero, Dr. Vincent Gilgamesh, hijacks a Time Machine to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
• In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge, Bebop takes over the Channel 6 building after having hijacked their latest broadcast with Krang's robot head, so the player(s) must liberate April's workplace from him at the start of the game. The Foot Clan has also taken over several areas throughout Manhattan.
• The climax of Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes has XOF forces, disguised as a nuclear inspection team, infiltrate Mother Base and set off explosives to destroy the sea-borne fortress, killing most of the MSF soldiers stationed there. This brutal attack becomes a catalyst for Snake and Miller's crusade for revenge nine years later.
• Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain:
  • A smaller-scale attack occurs on the new Mother Base when a renegade platoon of MSF troops, the leader of whom blames Snake for what went down nine years prior, assumes control of the R&D Platform and takes several Diamond Dogs hostage. It's up to Snake to retake the platform and eliminate the renegade leader.
  • FOB Missions allow you to infiltrate the forward operating bases of other players, steal resources and staff from them, and potentially fight the FOB owner (or one of their supporters) if you mess up and get spotted. The aforementioned R&D Platform attack actually serves as a tutorial regarding how these missions work.
• Criminal Case:
  • In the penultimate case of Criminal Case: Mysteries of the Past, the Flying Squad's airship is stormed by Mayor Lawson's henchmen to arrest the team for being part of La Résistance, forcing the Flying Squad to seek refuge in Lady Highmore's manor for the remaining portion of the game.
  • In the final case of Criminal Case: The Conspiracy, the police department are forced to flee the precinct after the Big Bad's army storms it during their city-wide attack, requiring to continue the investigation in another more run-down and destroyed precinct for the rest of the case.
• Similar to the Star Fox 64 example above, Chapter 26 of Project X Zone 2 has the Dragonturtle attacked on all sides by various enemies, forcing the team to split up on all sides. If a single enemy touches it, it's an instant Game Over.

Webcomics

• In Sluggy Freelance Aylee does this twice during her Face–Heel Turn. First she turns the apartment building where the Main Characters all lived into the headquarters/fortress for her company (a subsidiary of Hereti-Corp). Then, as soon as the cast finds a new place to live, she shows up at their Halloween party, injects every person there with a paralyzing toxin, and taunts them with how helpless they are against her.
• The Order of the Stick: Most of the third arc is dedicated to the Order and the forces of Azure City defending the city from the hobgoblin/undead army led by Xykon and Redcloak and eventually being overrun.
  • Later in the comic (warning: spoilers!), Redcloak's forces have also managed to crush the resistance in Azure City, killing every member of the resistance except for Niu and destroying their mountain base.
• Inverted and subverted in Precocious. Jacob (as Target Man) takes down the Supervillain Union and takes control of the Fortress of Evil...only to be taken down by Suzette (as villain Mylytant Femynyst) three seconds later.
• Magick Chicks: After severing Faith's connection to the school to use as her own, Cerise gets rid of the student council and takes over Artemis Academy. Then presents the faculty and its remaining students to Hecate and renames the school in her honor.
• In Crimson Knights chapter 6 Cralesian army attacks and sacks Brennus Cliff after Grandmaster Geron refuses to let king Friduheim use it as a base for his campaign in Aleovohan.

Web Original

• Parodied in Code Ment, when Lelouch and the Black Knights attack a warehouse to steal drugs stating "All Your Drugs Are Belong To Us!", except they're immediately told they just blew down a department store and the warehouse they were looking for was next door.
• In The Gamer's Alliance, the Yamato Empire and the Clergy of Mardük launch a surprise attack on the Aisonian capital Myridia during the Yamatian Invasion arc and end up taking over the city. Later the Proninist Party and the Northern Horde pull this off in Maar Sul City and Vanna, respectively, during the Godslayer era.
• Whateley Universe: Whateley Academy has had its (in)famous Halloween attack. No students actually died, but this was primarily due to most of them being incapacitated right from the start and the attackers being under orders not to actually kill any students except their assigned targets anyway; the campus security forces weren't as lucky.
• Protectors of the Plot Continuum: The PPC's headquarters has been invaded on several occasions. Culprits include armies of Mary Sues, a rogue security department, and a stampede of creatures created due to a typo in a spambot's message.
• The Anti-Cliché and Mary-Sue Elimination Society's base of operations, the Library Arcanium, is taken over by the Sues in "Insert Red Skies Twilight Here".
• The season 2 finale of We're Alive ends with the fall of the Tower.
• The Gungan Council has Naboo being the headquarters of the Jedi. This makes it a frequent target for attack, with the most prolific one being the year-long "Theed Under Attack."
• In Beyond the Impossible, one of the first things the Greek goddess Eris does after taking over NORAD is sending a message reading “I’m in your base, killing your dudes”.
• Super Mario Bros.: Heroes of the Stars: One of the first things the Shroobs do when they get to the Mushroom World is take over Bowser's Castle.

Western Animation

• In Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Fire Nation takes over the city of Ba Sing Se, effectively conquering the Earth Kingdom and forcing the heroes to go incognito after escaping the city.
  • Earlier in the series, Aang, Katara and Sokka arrive at the city of Omashu only to discover that it has fallen to the Fire Nation.
  • More true to the trope is the Siege of the North, when the Northern Water Tribe, secure for generations, was subjected to a massive assault when the Fire Nation learned Aang was there. Although in that case, they successfully defended themselves. Having a giant koi fish fight for them certainly helped.
  • In the Sequel Series, The Legend of Korra, the Equalists seize both the Republic City government buildings and Air Temple Island, forcing everybody to flee.
• Beast Wars had an episode where a Starscream-possessed Waspinator spearheaded the (temporary) takeover of the Maximal base.
  • Later, Rampage destroys it, by shoving it off a waterfall, forcing the Maximals to find a new base.
• Brickleberry had an episode where Woody and Malloy kicked out of their mansion by the Secretary of Interior after Woody (under Malloy's advice) really pissed her off with a cartoon offending her and they scheme to take it back by either killing her or buttering up to her.
• In one Bad Future of Captain Planet and the Planeteers, the Ecovillains live on Hope Island, setting up things like a mall and a polluting power plant, and the Planeteers have all but given up. Thankfully, it was All Just a Dream.
  • There was an Alternate Timeline two parter where Wheeler never joined the Planeteers. The remaining Planeteers split up, being unable to call upon Captain Planet without Fire, and Hoggish Greedly was able to take over Hope Island and turn it into a Vegas-like tourist attraction.
• Happens all the time on Code Lyoko. Not surprising considering the enemy's physical form is also the computer they use for their operations (at least until Season 3).
• In Codename: Kids Next Door, Sector V suffers this a lot, as their treehouse is taken over/destroyed/stolen by their archenemies, The Delightful Children, turnips, Santa's Elfa Strike Team, and their own organization being manipulated by The Mole.
• Also occurred in Danny Phantom when the hero's Local Hangout were violently invaded by the Guys in White by order of Vlad who bought the franchise briefly to torment Danny.
• In the DC Super Friends short, Joker takes over the Hall Of Justice with help from Gorilla Grodd and Mr. Freeze.
• The Fairly Oddparents in one episode had Francis the school bully kick out Timmy Turner and his parents out of their own house through sheer brutal force and enjoy the the house for himself. Timmy then had to learn martial arts to take back the house. In another episode, Timmy destroyed Vicky's home out of spite but this severely backfires on him when Vicky decides to move in with his family and Timmy gets kicked out of his room and forced to sleep outside in a doghouse (chain attached).
• Happens in the Hunter's Moon arc of Gargoyles with the destruction of the Clock Tower by the Hunters.
  • Also from the beginning of the series, when Xanatos bought Castle Wyvern and had it airlifted to the top of his own skyscraper headquarters. This ultimately drove Goliath's clan to the Clock Tower in the first place. By the end of Hunter's Moon, Xanatos, in the midst of an epic Heel–Face Turn, allowed the clan to return to their ancestral home.
• Occurs in the first season finale of Generator Rex. Van Kleiss and his henchmen hijack the keep, and ram it into Providence Headquarters, then go to town on the place. Predictably, dozens of Red Shirts die in this episode.
• One episode of House of Mouse had Mickey Mouse and the rest of the crew kicked out of the building that gets renamed into "House of Villains".
• Happened a few times in the Justice League series. From the dream invasion by Dr. Destiny to the C.A.D.M.U.S. attack led by Galatea, the Supergirl clone.
  • They use the Batcave as a backup base, and that was also raided at one point.
• Kim Possible:
  • In episode "Ill Suited", Kim and Ron are eating at Bueno Nacho when Professor Dementor attacks. Notable because Dementor says the following line: "All your battlesuit now belongs to me!."
  • Let's not forget "So The Drama", where Drakken took over the Bueno Nacho corporation...
  • And that in both the movie and the grand finale her house gets totalled.
• Happens several times on ReBoot, particularly since the heroes' headquarters doubled as the control post for the entire Mainframe.
• In the Molly of Denali episode "It Came From Beyond," after vetch flowers start invading Molly's garden, Trini has a dream about a talking vetch who refuses to leave the garden, while her and her friends chant "YOUR HOME IS OUR HOME NOW."
• The Smurfs (1981): In "Bigmouth's Friend," when King Gerard refuses to surrender Clockwork Smurf to the evil Lord Balthazaar and series antagonist Gargamel, Balthazaar counters by unveiling a huge giant, whom he hopes to use to break down the castle walls and storm the inside to force Gerard to give him Clockwork (which they hope to use to destroy the Smurfs). Clockwork tries to stop the giant robot but is crushed to bits ... before Bigmouth eventually averts the trope.
• Star Wars Rebels: Season 3 finale "Zero Hour" has the Empire attacking Phoenix Squadron's base on the planet Atollon. Ultimately, the surviving rebels are forced to flee, and the episode ends with them en route to Yavin IV.
• A variation appears in proper English in the Static Shock episode "A League of Their Own" (part one). After Static blasts down the buzzsaw-handed cleaning robot, Brainiac says "You only delay the inevitable. All of this base will soon belong to me."
• Happened to the Superfriends at least once, and almost certainly more.
• In the second season finale of Superjail!, The Ultraprison crew has taken over the titular jail while the main cast and other prisoners have been on their cruise and got lost for two months.
• Aside from the adaptation of the comic book story referenced above, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) had this happen again, when Karai attacked the turtles' second lair, completely trashing it and forcing them to relocate to a third lair.
• Teen Titans (2003): H.I.V.E. took over the Teen Titans' base in the third episode (but first episode aired) of the cartoon, and to say the least, it certainly wasn't the last time such an event took place. One notable occurrence was when Slade attempted to destroy the base, but it turned out to be a Batman Gambit to have Terra earn the Titans' trust by saving it.
  • The most notable example is probably two episodes later "Betrayal" when Terra deactivates the security system to let 200 armed robots in undetected.
  • Befittingly, the Titans East's base would later be taken over in their debut episode.
  • Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo movie started with a supervillain blatantly assaulting the Titans Tower with explosives.
• In the Thunder Cats 2011 episode "Omens Part Two," the Catfolk-populated magical kingdom of Thundera, stuck in Medieval Stasis, and skeptical of the existence of so-called "technology" is conquered in one night by their enemies the Lizards, who have been supplied with technological superweapons by dreaded ancient enemy Mumm-Ra. Heroes the ThunderCats must flee and go Walking the Earth in search of Ancient Artifacts that will stop him.
• Between Season 2 of The Transformers and The Transformers: The Movie, the Decepticons take over Cybertron.
• Transformers: Prime: Near the end of the second season, Starscream uses the abilities granted by Red Energon to sneak into the Autobots' base through their GroundBridge and steal the Omega Keys. He would have done more (he states his desire to gut Arcee, for one), but he was on a time limit.
  • Topped big time three episodes later in the season finale. After creating a fortress on Earth within line of sight of the Autobot base, the Decepticons launch a full-scale assault, culminating in Megatron using the Nemesis' Wave-Motion Gun to obliterate the entire mountain... with Optimus still inside.
• PJ Masks: The hero's HQ is a favorite target for their enemies, with all nighttime villains having tried at least once to conquer or destroy it, with varying degrees of success.
• In the Futurama episode "Anthology of Interest II", the Berzerk character says this exact phrase when exiting the Space Invaders spaceship.
• PAW Patrol: Mighty Pups: Harold Humdinger states this after he captures Ryder from behind and lets the Pups know that the Lookout is his now.
• In Trollz Simon successfully takes over Trollzopolis in the Middles Ages arc and the brainwashed girls arc, though by the end of things he's ousted and things go back to normal.
• In Jackie Chan Adventures, this happens a lot to Section 13:
  • In "Queen of the Shadowkhan", Jade's titular Superpowered Evil Side takes control of Section 13 with the aid of the Shadowkhan.
  • In "The Powers Unleashed", both the Dark Hand and Daolon Wong break into Section 13 to steal the Talismans.
  • In "Re-Enter The Dragon", Shendu attacks Section 13 to take back the Talisman powers from the Noble Animals.
  • In "Ninja Twilight", the unleashed combined might of the Shadowkhan tribes quickly seize control of Section 13.
  • In "Black and White and Chi All Over", Drago briefly breaks into Section 13 to steal the demon chi, but is quickly repelled.
  • In "The Powers that Be - Part 2", Drago sends the empowered Ice Crew to attack Section 13 and destroy it.
• Trollhunters uses this trope in each Season Finale:
  • In "Something Rotten This Way Comes", Angor Rot and his golem Mooks invade Trollmarket and start attacking everyone they can get their hands on.
  • In "In the Hall of the Gumm-Gumm King", Queen Usurna lets Gunmar and his troops into Trollmarket, allowing them to swiftly take over and begin forcibly converting the denizens into Gumm-Gumms. They stay in control of the place for the remainder of the series.
  • In "The Eternal Knight Parts 1 & 2", the Gumm-Gumms launch a full invasion of Arcadia as a precursor towards conquering the entire surface world.
• In the penultimate episode of Tangled: The Series, Cassandra and the Brotherhood attack Corona and overwhelm their defenses, forcing Eugene to call for an evacuation.
• In Season 2 of Xiaolin Showdown, Jack Spicer along with the other Rogues Gallery of the team takes over the temple to gather all the Shen-Gon-Wu.
• The Owl House:
  • Hilariously subverted in "Agony of a Witch", when the Emperor's Coven attempts to attack the titular house to arrest Eda, only for Hooty to wipe the floor with them. A season later in "Edge of the World", they attack again while Hooty is away with Luz and King to meet the Titan Trappers; "O Titan, Where Art Thou" reveals that while they failed to capture Eda or Lilith, they were still forced to flee, allowing the Coven to ransack the house, leaving it empty and unused again until the end of the Grand Finale.
  • In "Labyrinth Runners", the Emperor's Coven raids Hexside in order to force all the students to join a coven ahead of the Day of Unity, leading to the students and teachers fighting back against them and eventually managing to drive them into retreat.

Real Life

• As the saying goes in the U.S. Army: "You can shoot down all the MiG's you want, but if the enemy tank commander has a beer in your officers' club, then you lost the war."
• Any number of real military forces have had this happen to them. Either because of surprise or defeats on the battlefield, the defenders find themselves fighting in their own front yard. At the end of the war, this may be combined with a Bolivian Army Ending for the losing side. Can also happen at the beginning of a war.
  • Perhaps the most famous real-life example is the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and the Philippines that pulled the US into World War II which before this point was distant and far away. The moment the Japanese made an attack on American soil the isolationist mentality reversed almost instantly.
  • Doolittle Raid. Two U.S. carriers launched a small fleet of bombers that firebombed Tokyo in early 1942. Tactically, the raid was not too important as nothing important was damaged and over half the bombers were lost, but it did a fantastic job of boosting U.S. morale and lowering Japanese morale in the capital city, in addition to forcing the Japanese to hold back many of their forces to defend the Home Islands from further attacks.
• This happens a lot in Revolutions, where the deliberate hijacking of the government seat is a potent symbol of a new order;
  • During The French Revolution, the women of Paris marched to Versailles, the French Royal seat since Louis XIV and intimidated Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette to leave Versailles for Paris to the old seat at the Tuileries Palace. The King and Queen were in virtual house arrest with the guard of Versailles drawn from Parisian radicals and they disastrously tried to escape their own base for the frontier, to be halted at Varennes only to be brought back to Tuileries. Then in 1792, August 10, the Parisians joined by volunteers from Marseilles rose up and stormed the Tuileries in a bloody insurrection forcing the King and Queen to take refuge at the National Convention who imprisoned them at the Temple fortress and La Force prison, and during the Reign of Terror, the Committee of Public Safety convened their meetings at the Tuilleries using the room of the King's sister, Madame Elisabeth, as a meeting room. (Madame Elisabeth, Antoinette and Louis XVI were guillotined eventually).
  • During Red October, the February Revolution toppled the Tsar and put the Mensheviks in power, and they promptly took up residence in the Winter Palace. Later Lenin and Co. stormed the Winter Palace and took over (with the liquor in the cellar freely given to the people leading to drunken celebrations), and much later the Bolsheviks relocated the Capital to Moscow at the Kremlin, the old seat of Tsardom and eventually made it the seat of Communism.
• Another (in)famous example is the Tet Offensive of 1968, where a massive sneak attack managed to breach the perimeter at some of the "safest" places in Vietnam.
  • And ended in the complete destruction of the Viet Cong as a cohesive fighting force. Although a surprise, and political turning point, the attack was not a military success.
    • But then, the war was not entirely a military war. The Tet Offensive is a case of an operation being a military defeat and a political victory.
• The Russian base at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam was built by the US Navy in the 1960s.
• On the other side of the war, on April 30, 1975 the North Vietnamese Army rammed a tank through the front gate of Independence Palace, the seat of South Vietnamese power, and put their own flag atop it. The takeover of the Palace marks the political end of The Vietnam War.
• This has happened a few times during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. During their 2002 reoccupation of the West Bank, the Israeli Defense Forces made a point of going into Ramallah and occupying the Palestinian Authority headquarters building. Later, when Hamas forces chased their Fatah rivals out of Gaza, a masked Hamas fighter in the PA's offices in Gaza City pretended to call Condoleeza Rice from the phone there to the amusement of onlooking reporters.
• Second Ypres - the Germans almost, almost got through the British defenses with the help of poison gas. It came down to second-line troops attacking German Guards regiments, convincing the Germans that the British were still strong and causing them to back down. A captured German officer, asked what stood between his force and success, was told "Divisional headquarters." A small cluster of administrative staff, whose job is normally to plan battles and order supplies, were the last line of defense.
• The Battle of the Alamo in 1836.
• The Netherlands in World War II. In 3 days, when the first defenses reached the border, the German forces were already in the middle of the country. This happened mostly because the classic Dutch strategy of flooding part of the countryside provides an excellent defense against land-based troops - but the Germans had paratroopers. Oops.
  • Somewhat subverted in that most of the German paratroops landed in areas where the main strength of the Dutch Army was assembling. If only by sheer weight of numbers, the Dutch nearly rolled up the lightly equipped paratroopers around Rotterdam who were saved only by the arrival of the 9th Panzer Division. They did roll up the German paratroops landing around the Hague, whose mission specifically was to capture the Dutch government leaders, and inflicted very heavy losses, with nearly 2000 being captured. A lot of other parachute landings (German landing on Crete and the Allied assault in the Netherlands—Operation Market-Garden) would suffer similar fates. This probably applies to most attempts at pulling off this trope in real life, as main bases tend to be well-garrisoned and surprise attacks often have to be carried out by a small number of lightly armed troops so as to sneak past the outer defenses.

  These achievements may seem small, but note that Hitler thought it would take only 1 day to take The Netherlands and that they fought with pre-WWI era weaponry.

  • Similar the invasion of Denmark during which German forces crossed the border in the early morning and paratroopers took control of the Danish air bases. Some hours later German bombers dropped leaflets over Copenhagen, which pretty much said "All your base are belong to us!", and by noon the government had surrendered. The trope was played even more straight with the simultaneous invasion of Norway. Oslo's impressive naval defenses kept the German navy at bay for long enough to secure the king's escape into exile. Once he was safely away, the troops surrendered. Or retreated into hiding.
    • Aided by extreme boldness of the Germans. On the first day of the invasion of Norway, only a few dozen paratroopers and a recon plane that landed at the airport were the only Germans in Oslo. But, within hours of landing, these guys were holding a parade on the streets of the capital that convinced the Norwegians that a much larger force had landed and has successfully gained control of the city.
• The Fall of Constantinople, which finally ended the reign of the Byzantine Empire. Oddly, the Ottomans won when someone forgot to lock one of the city gates.
• Sometimes All Your Base can be an advantage: at one point during the Seven Years War, the Austrian army took advantage of the Prussian army's absence fighting the French to capture the province of Silesia. When the Prussians eventually responded it was to discover they were outnumbered 2:1 on a battlefield of the Austrians' choosing. Unfortunately, the site they had chosen near Leuthen happened to be the Prussian Army's peacetime training ground, and the resulting familiarity with the terrain made the Prussian victory almost hilariously one-sided.
  • And then the Austrians did the same thing to Napoleon on the Marchfeld.
  • Speaking of Napoleon, he tried to do this with the infamous failure that was his invasion of Russia, and in a Subverted Trope, was turned back right before entered Moscow. Then, as we all know, Hitler tried to do exactly the same thing over a century later.
• This has happened to Poland too many times to list, especially Krakow. There's a reason it's considered The Chew Toy in European history.
  • Of course, Poland's defeats have usually been due to the overwhelming numerical superiority of their enemies, as Poland traditionally has a small but very very capable professional military. 1939, for example, the Germans (not counting the Soviets who attacked from the east) enjoyed a 40-1 advantage over the Polish Army, and the Germans still lost more men than the Poles had in their entire army.
• In retaliation for the destruction of York (now Toronto) in the War of 1812, the British Regulars invaded and burned Washington. It's Canadians invading another country, even though the Canadian militia wasn't even there.
• During World War II the Royal Navy pulled one on the Italian navy with a torpedo plane assault on the Italian fleet in Taranto's harbour, disabling three battleships and showing to the world that the raid on Pearl Harbor was possible (both Taranto and Pearl Harbor having water shallow enough that the use of aircraft-launched torpedoes was thought impossible).
• During World War I Italy had proto-Fascist Gabriele D'Annunzio, who pulled it twice: first time he led a torpedo boat raid on the Austro-Hungarian fleet in the harbour of Bakar and left a mocking message: it wasn't the first time the Italians did it (and in fact the boats accompanying D'Annunzio were crewed by the guys who pulled the previous raid), after that raid the Austro-Hungarians placed torpedo nets to further protect their ships, and later those two torpedo boats that had accompanied D'Annunzio would sink the Austrian flagship after accidentally meeting it on patrol), and then he led a flight over Vienna to drop propaganda leaflets just prove they could bomb the enemy capital if they just wished so (cue Oh, Crap! for Vienna's people).
  • The Italian Navy later did it again, when they used the very first manned torpedo to infiltrate a harbour and sink another battleship. Doubles as a Kick the Dog moment because by that point the Austro-Hungarian Empire was collapsing and begging for peace and that harbour and all the ships in it had been ceded to one of the break-away states right after the mission was launched.
• The Italian Navy, with three second-generation manned torpedoes, the Italians penetrated Alexandria harbour and mined two battleships (including the flagship with admiral on board) and a tanker (there was no carrier, so they mined another target), disabling the battleships and damaging the tanker and a destroyer (collateral damage).
• In the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the English returned to their base after kicking French butt and discovered that a small group of French knights had slipped past them during the fight and killed the guards watching over their baggage.
• Ukraine's Crimean bases after Viktor Yanukovich's overthrow and the subsequent Russian military intervention.
• Hannibal's problem during the Second Punic War was that he couldn't do it and the Romans knew it: his army was powerful in manouver battles, but was too small to successfully besiege Rome or even march through the lands of the Umbrians, the Latins and the Etruscans, Rome's physically closest allies (as in Rome being a Latin city and the Etruscans and the Umbrians surrounding the other ways to Rome). Hannibal's strategic plan was centered into convincing Rome's allies to defect, but while it had some success Etruscans, Latins and Umbrians remained loyal, and the reinforcements he got from the defections weren't enough to try and march through their lands. Then the Romans pulled it on him, first attacking the cities of the defectors and razing them if they didn't surrender and then attacking Hannibal's bases in Spain. And when that wasn't enough, they attacked Carthage itself.
• This iconic photo◊ from the spring 1968 student protests at Columbia University, during which the administration building got taken over, showed student leader Mark Rudd sitting in university president Grayson Kirk's chair, smoking a cigarette.
• When Iraqi Infomation Minister Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf was making many of his press conferences in early April 2003 denying that U.S. troops were winning, much less in the country at all, some U.S. armored units had established a base less than a kilometer away in the same Baghdad neighborhood.
• The most humiliating moment in U.S. military history had to be when the British Army took Washington during the War of 1812, after the much-vaunted well-regulated militia failed to show up in significant enough numbers to deter them. The British commander decided to rub it in. He had his men go into the empty House chamber and take seats, then went to the podium himself and called the meeting to order as if he were the Speaker. One of his junior officers rose and offered a motion to burn the chamber down; it was duly seconded by another officer. The commander called the vote and the motion passed unanimously.
• Private Eye's owner and longtime editor Peter Cook once led a raid on the Mirror offices at a time when Maxwell had tried to force the magazine off the newsstands (and succeeded with WH Smith, a large British newsagents chain). He and some cohorts, including current editor Ian Hislop, convinced the doorman and security at the Mirror offices that they were there to see Robert Maxwell. They used this to vandalize Maxwell's office, steal the master copy of a planned spoof Not Private Eye smear-job piece Maxwell had been producing (they had previously sent the journalists involved with the project a case of whisky, with predictable results), order a champagne lunch to be delivered at Maxwell's expense, and, finally, very drunk, phoning Maxwell personally in New York and saying "guess where we are".

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