Attack Pattern Alpha

"Sir, formation 'V' as in the letter, or 'V' as in 5?"

USS Prometheus Computer: Specify attack pattern.
The Doctor: Attack pattern... Alpha?
USS Prometheus Computer: Specify target.
[the Doctor and the EMH Mark II exchange glances]
The Doctor & EMH Mark II: ROMULANS!

— Star Trek: Voyager, "Message in a Bottle"

When the good guys are in The Army, part of The Squad or even on a spaceship, they're bound to get into a lot of fights, and what better way to show that you take this seriously than by going into Attack Pattern Alpha? Attack patterns are a convenient way of saying, "the good guys attack the bad guys and they know what they're doing," without going into detail that would bog down the action.

Attack Pattern Alpha has almost as many names as Gandalf; usually it's a Greek letter followed by a number, and possibly a color. For a team, it usually involves choreographed moves with all team members going into stock poses with their weapon of choice, perhaps with an All Your Colors Combined thrown in for good measure. For less colorful occasions, it will be all team members attacking from different directions or even feinting to distract an opponent.

Spaceships or fighter planes will usually go into a formation, do some fancy flying and shoot to blow stuff up. This can get hilarious if the show heavily recycles footage, as last week's Wronski Feint can become tonight's Attack Pattern Alpha.

Related to Time for Plan B and Police Code for Everything. If done excessively, this can become Calling Your Attacks. Not to be confused with Alpha Strike.

Compare Operation: [Blank].

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Lampshaded in Angel Densetsu: "I call this strategy triangle attack alpha!" "So, basically is just surrounding a guy and jumping him together, right?"
• Not even Code Geass is immune to this.
  • It once calls out attack pattern Sigma, instead of Alpha. Justified in that the formation really looks like the Greek letter sigma and it actually does work as a mid-battle ambush.
  • It gets somewhat ludicrous at the end of R2, when Lelouch throws around intricate (and poetic) formation names to his army in preparation for his battle with Schneizel, though the strategies do serve to reinforce the Chess Motifs.
  • The Four Holy Swords do this constantly.
• One issue of the Cowboy Bebop manga has Faye, Jet, and Spike being interviewed about the bounty hunter life when suddenly work becomes a more pressing priority. Jet calls for the team to adopt Formation C. The interviewer is slightly disillusioned to learn that Formation C is "Wing it." It doesn't help when she's told that Formation A is "Take it as it comes," and Formation B is something like "First come, first served."
• Digimon
  • In Digimon Data Squad Tohma combines it with Gaomon's Calling Your Attacks.
  • Ken in Digimon Adventure 02 also used this... both on the soccer field and as the Digimon Emperor.
• Gundam
  • Mobile Suit Gundam has the Black Tri-stars and their Jetstream Attack. It didn't work too well. In fairness, the Jetstream Attack (which involves the Tri-Stars lining up and attacking the enemy one after the other) was developed back when only their side had Humongous Mecha and their opponents had ineffective tanks and fighter planes. When faced against an opposing pilot with actual skill and a decent machine, they were thwarted handily.
  • The Jetstream Attack also shows up in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, G Gundam (used by random thugs against Domon; fails spectacularly) and Yakitate!! Japan (by the actual Tri-Stars. Kinda.).
  • Subverted in ∀ Gundam. Ghingnham's Maihroo team used such patterns extensively in their decades of simulated warfare, but they're not effective against flesh-and-blood opponents like Loran and Harry. (Which is not to say they aren't dangerous in other ways.)
  • Mobile Suit Gundam 00 virtually operates on these due to the tactical forecasting of Sumeragi Lee Noriega for Celestial Being, and Kati Mannequin for A-Laws. A few of these, such as S-33 are mentioned and shown executed during Setsuna's one man challenge of The Trinities when Tieria, of all people, shows up and begins backing him up by taking tactical command of the situation. Lockon joins in a few moments later to keep things fair.
  • In Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans, Carta Issue keeps using these types of attacks with her subordinates against Tekkadan's mobile suits. She's not prepared for such chaotic opponents.
• Ozma Lee in Macross Frontier names the SMS attack manoeuvres after Fire Bomber songs.
• In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, Subaru and Teana have at least two (and quite possibly three or more) Cross Shifts. They use Cross Shift A against some drones, which consists of Subaru seemingly acting as a diversion while Teana shoots from behind (one stray shot almost hits Subaru). They also use Cross Shift C against Nanoha during the mock battle in Episode 8, which mainly consists of Subaru attacking Nanoha head-on and Teana jumping down on her with Dagger Mode while she's distracted by an illusionary Teana elsewhere (this doesn't end well).
• In Muhyo and Roji, Goryo, an executor who is skilled at using tactics in exorcisms, uses Maneuver 108 with Ebisu in an attempt to corner and trap a spirit.
• Naruto
  • "Manji formation" in an early episode. Manji formation apparently means "stand in a rough circle, all facing outwards, in front of the guy you're supposed to be protecting, leaving his back totally exposed." Presumably, their fourth member (Kakashi) was covering the fourth side and the target's back, which would explain why the assassin ended up hitting the target from the front. Just... from farther away and out of sight.
  • Team 7 and Team 8 try "Formation B" against Tobi, but it doesn't work because he's an Intangible Man.
• One Piece
  • Tactics 15! Pirate Docking Six! Giant Robot Warrior! BIG EMPEROR!
  • Usopp, being the big liar he is, likes to call the Attack Pattern Alpha after his crewmates have beaten the enemies. In the business of getting all the merit for teamwork, he's the best.
• In Attack on Titan, Levi's squad conducts a series of perfectly coordinated and precise strikes on the Female Titan with minimal spoken communication.
• Black Tri-star expies show up in Girls und Panzer der Film in the form of the University Team's Bermuda Trio. Their Bermuda Attack functions similarly to the Jetstream Attack and they use it to great effect against Saunders' Kay, Naomi and Arisa, disrupting their tank formation and allowing them to be defeated in quick succession. Notably, they do this in M26 Pershings.

Board Games

• Chess names a wide range of studied openings and gambits that run in fairly set patterns, frequently using the names of prominent players, key pieces, or locations in what is not necessarily intuitive to any outside the field of study. Talk to a chess player about a Ruy Lopez/Spanish Opening, Sicilian Defence, Two Knights Defence, or the older Giuoco Piano, and they will probably understand, predicated on the obscurity of the referenced opening.
• Here I Stand, a boardgame set in the early Reformation, has developed the term "Caledonian Gambit" for a collusion between France and England over Scotland, where France agrees to abandon Scotland in exchange for getting the Scottish troops in exile for their own forces, and possibly other consideration from England. A similar tactic is the "Serenissima Subterfuge," where a power (normally the Hapsburgs, occasionally France or the Ottomans) declares war on Venice to give the Pope cheap control over it.

Comic Books

• In the Marvel Universe, Captain America and Cyclops are fond of announcing maneuvers along these lines.
• X-Men
  • X-Men who train in the Danger Room together sometimes come up with such codenames for their maneuvers. ("Colossus! Fastball Special!")
  • Sentinels also have a tendency to use attack patterns in battle.
• Even Deadpool is known to use them, albeit in a less than traditional way : "Oh, no— he sees us! Quick — evasive strategy 423! Hide behind the person in front of you!"
• Parodied in Fantastic Four, when a PR man accompanies the family on a "Sunday drive" (visiting another dimension and saving a Starfish Alien from predators).
  Ben: Mission accomplished! Gimme a lift, Suzie?
  Sue: Maneuver 17-A?
  Ben: Oh, my Aunt Petunia, stop showin' off 'cause we got company! I can barely remember our phone number, okay? Just let down a friggin' line!
• The Rat Queens seem to use these in battle, though they avoid the traditional Greek letter naming scheme and instead give their attack patterns descriptive names like "White Screamer," "Betty Climber" and "Surprise Spine-Tickler."
• Made fun of by Asterix, like everything else. An incident involving two rival Roman factions coming to blows during Asterix the Legionary results in two armies using a shared pool of tactics and the signal for tactics, leading to the comedic spectacle of identically dressed legionnaires getting confused and constantly asking whose formation they're in (Caesar's troops ending up in Scipio's formations and vice versa) as a goofy send-up of the historical Battle of Thapsus.
  Centurion: Form a Tortoise!
  Legionary: Whose Tortoise is this again?"
  Another Legionary: This is Caesar's Tortoise!
  Third Legionary: No it isn't!
  Fourth Legionary: Yes it is!
• Lumberjanes: In the first issue, when the Lumberjanes encounter a pack of three-eyed magic foxes, Mal calles for "Little Red Formation", prompting the others to go on the offensive, with April shouting "To Grandmother's house we go!" Mal would later say that "Little Red Formation" was not supposed to go like that.

Fan Works

• Calvin & Hobbes: The Series
  Calvin: Engage Emergency Protocol #5557490!
  MTM: Whatever.
  • Said protocol is a large burst of fire.
  • And later:
  Calvin: MTM, initiate emergency protocol number 2235!
  MTM: I can't believe you can remember all these numbers.
• In Stephen Brian Ratliff's Marissa Picard storys [sic], the titular protagonist has a playbook consisting of a wide variety of Attack Patterns, all starting with her own name. Many use the names of classical composers to distinguish them from all the other Marissa Attack Patterns.
  This was satirized in one Marissa parody.
• The Legend of Total Drama Island features this during the dodgeball match. When the Muskies adopt the tactic of having everyone throw simultaneously at the same player, Courtney devises organized patterns with names like "Coffin" and "Die Five".
• Bait and Switch (STO) uses this a couple times. When fighting some Jem'Hadar in chapter five, Eleya orders "attack pattern Picard Lambda". After some Orion ships manage to batter down one section of the USS Bajor's shields in chapter six, she frantically barks the order to roll ship and go to "defensive pattern Kirk Alpha".
• One More Trigger: The Samaritans do have standard plans for a variety of contingencies, but Ladybug's plan for assaulting the Empire 88 confuses even the dads. Lisa, of course, follows along perfectly with her super-intuition.^note Naturally, the plans are only explained to the reader after they're already in effect.
  Ladybug: We're thinking we'd locate them with a flytrap, then start out with a Blind Man's Bluff leading on to Survival of the Unfittest. After we hit what we figure is a good number, we switch to shock and awe and steamroll the rest.
• The Universe Doesn't Cheat has Eleya first order a Crazy Ivan, then a Sulu Flip later on. "Crazy Ivan" is a real maneuver used by submarines, it's a powered course reversal performed by an underway sub to try to force following enemy boats to break off (revealing their presence and position). Pioneered by the Soviet Navy, thus the "Ivan" nickname. As for "crazy," flipping a 3,000 ton submarine over like a 30,000 pound jet fighter could be considered quite mad. "Sulu Flip" is a reference to an event in My Enemy, My Ally where Hikaru Sulu put the Enterprise through a 180 degree backflip while traveling at high warp.
• During the big fleet battle in chapter three of The Wrong Reflection there's a passage consisting of fragments of overheard comm chatter. Among the lines is a reference to something called "attack pattern Shran Omega".
• Peace Forged in Fire uses references to a number of Romulan commanders in the Star Trek mythos, with attack patterns Tyrava Four, Valdore Seven, Velal Five, Shinzon Four, and Donatra Seven.
• Solaere ssiun Hnaifv'daenn has attack pattern D'Trel Five, in a Shout-Out to StarSword's fellow author and sometime collaborator worffan101. In this case it's pretty fully explained what the order refers to: A singularity jump, followed by launch of torpedoes from the rear launcher, followed by cloaking and pulling a Crazy Ivan, and finally decloaking and knocking the enemy's aft shields down just as the torpedoes arrive.
• Wings to Fly mentions "Drill Beta"; one of six drills trained for the event of a Preventer mobile suit unit encounters a pilot using a Zero System. They require very precise relative maneuvering, as they're designed to attack specific programming weaknesses in how the Zero System interprets data.
  • It also includes commands about formation; "kick it out x" or "reel it in x" based on real-life commands for formation spacing distance.
• In Starcrossed, one Federation officer uses such a pattern during the Empire's invasion of Earth, leading to a massive Oh, Crap! moment for a nearby Rebel - against Star Wars computers, predetermined patterns are basically suicide.
• In the Star Trek: Voyager Parody Fic Software Error, Commander Chakotay has Authorisation Chakotay Angry Bear, Chakotay Sly Fox, and Chakotay Cunning Bastard!
• During the Indigo League of Pokémon Reset Bloodlines, Ash's opponent in the fifth round is a blind trainer named Kaia, who had to learn to give codified orders by necessity to make up for her handicap. It also works to her own advantage, since it gives her Pokémon a higher degree of independent action and keeps their opponents in the dark about what they're going to do.

Films — Animation

• In Flushed Away, Le Frog orders his hench-frogs to "Assume attack formation one!" They promptly shout "WE SURRENDER!", mush to Le Frog's annoyance.
• The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie has Plankton initiating Evil Plan Z, after he remembers that the alphabet doesn't stop at Y.
• Teen Titans Go! vs. Teen Titans: One of the distinctions between the "classic" team and the "Go" team is that the "classic" team prepares its plans ahead of time and gives them codes like this, and the "Go" team with the exception of "Go" Starfire, who calls on a Tamaranean battle formation for a swarm of parallel Starfires during the final battle would have difficulty preparing a salad without setting the kitchen on fire, to say nothing of a battle plan. At one point "Go" Cyborg yells a random sequence of letters, and after he explains what he actually meant, "classic" Cyborg yells at him that you have to come up with the codes ahead of time or they don't work.

Films — Live-Action

• Briefly played for laughs (and for awesome) in The Avengers:
  Captain America: Hulk? Smash.
• Blazing Saddles
  • From this movie of all places:
    Hedley Lamarr: What are we going to do about Rock Ridge?
    Taggart: I got it, I got it! We'll work up a Number 6 on 'em.
    Hedley Lamarr: Number 6? I'm afraid I'm not familiar with that one.
    Taggart: That's where we go a-ridin' into town, a-whampin' and whompin' every living thing that moves within an inch of its life! Except the women folks of course.
    Hedley Lamarr: You spare them?
    Taggart: Nah, we rape the shit out of them at the Number 6 Dance later on.
  • Of course, we later learn that things did not quite go according to plan:
    Reverend Johnson: I don't have to tell you people what has been happening to our beloved town: Sheriff murdered, crops burned, stores looted, women stampeded, and cattle raped.
• Played with in the Bowerry Boys movies. Just before a fight, Slip Mahoney would instruct the guys, "Routine five!" or something like that. It actually just amounted to going in and randomly throwing punches.
• From Doctor Strangelove: "Wing Attack Plan R? R for Romeo?" The plan is to nuke the borscht out of Russia, should the normal chain of command have broken down (e.g., from a Soviet nuclear first-strike).
• Flash Gordon: "SQUADRON FORTY! DIIIIIVE!"
• Played with in Men in Black. Agents K and J are preparing to shoot the evil alien's ship:
  K: [fiddles with his gun] Set for pulsar level five, sub-sonic implosion factor two.
  J: What?
  K: Just shoot the damn thing on the count of three! One...
• The Flying V in The Mighty Ducks. The only time it might fail is if the Ducks are playing the Final Boss team. Justified, as that formation would work well against a more stick-handling defense (which the earlier teams tend to be), but a more physically aggressive defense (which the Final Boss team always seems to use) can easily break it up.
• The eponymous Plan 9 from Outer Space, which "deals with the resurrection of the dead." Plans 1 through 8 must have been embarrassingly bad.
• The film Real Steel has a slightly different use of this trope, with the robotic boxer "Noisy Boy" had several combination attacks programmed into his voice control including Gravity Slam Uptown, Shogun Trinity, and Full Metal Feud. Given the protagonist bought Noisy from the original Japanese owners, the protagonist has no clue how to use him, and just starts yelling random combos to very poor effect.
• Red Cliff, being an adaptation of the famous battle of Chi Bi as told by Romance of the Three Kingdoms, features several classic Chinese battle formations (organized via flags and drumbeats) that go at least as far back as the Warring States period: in Zhou Yu's introductory scene, he is drilling his soldiers in the "Goose" formation (one that Zhuge Liang disses as "past its time"); later, Cao Cao's land army is routed by a "Turtle" formation; and in the climactic final battle, the Wu troops storm the opposing shore in a very Roman-looking square formation.
• The movie Sahara (2005) gives us "The Panama":
  Rudy Gunn: What happened in Panama?
  Al Gordinio: We weren't in Panama, we were in Guatemala!
  Rudy Gunn: Then why is it called a Panama?!
  Al Gordinio: We thought we were in Panama!
• In Starship Troopers, main characters Rico and Diz develop a football play called "flip six three hole", which when adapted to combat involves Rico somersaulting over an opponent, turning 180° in the air and kick ass.
• Star Trek V: The Final Frontier had fun with this as well. With Klingons eavesdropping on the comm channel, Kirk needed a shrewd way of telling the bridge crew that he intended to have his shuttle land at full speed without even trying to avoid a crash:
  Kirk: Stand by to execute Emergency Landing Plan... B.
  Chekov: What's Emergency Landing Plan B?
  Scotty: I don't have a clue...
  Kirk: B, as in... "barricade".
  Scotty: He can't be serious.
• Star Trek: Insurrection also has the Riker Maneuver, which consists of collecting as much volatile gas as possible, dumping it in front of the enemy ships and running. However, this was named for him afterwards, which seems to be fairly standard with there also being the Picard Manoeuvre (using a FTL jump to present a duplicate sensor reading a ship with no FTL targeting sensors), and the below example. The Defiant and NX-01 also do one called L-4, which is essentially an aerial loop IN SPACE to get behind a pursuing ship.
• Star Trek: Nemesis
  • Riker orders Defense Pattern Kirk Epsilon during the Battle of the Bassen Rift. This makes for a bit of Fridge Brilliance: Kirk was the first Starfleet captain to engage a warship that could fire while cloaked. The battle in Bassen Rift involved the Enterprise-E and two Romulan warbirds fighting a warship with this ability turned all the way up, so it makes sense that defensive tactics for this situation would be named after Kirk.
  • Meanwhile, Shinzon initiates the realspace battle with "Attack Pattern Shinzon Theta".
• Star Wars:
  • In The Empire Strikes Back, during the snowspeeder battle on Hoth, Luke orders "Attack Pattern Delta" — which appears to be flying in a single file line. Although if you keep watching, you'll notice that the four snowspeeders line up in a straight line, curve to the right as a group, and then split into pairs to take out two walkers. Presumably the split is where they get the name "delta".
  • The Star Wars Expanded Universe portrays "Attack Pattern Delta" in this context as referring to advancing in single file and then peeling off at the last minute, to present a smaller target to the AT-AT's relatively clumsy weapons. See the article on Wookieepedia. The Expanded Universe has quite a collection of these.
  • One of the Star Wars arcade games treats Attack Pattern Delta as an offensive action, where three snowspeeders concentrate their fire on a single point in an enemy's armor.
  • Repeatedly parodied, usually taking the form of "Attack Pattern Delta consists of flying straight at the enemy in the only direction they can actually shoot back".
• In Transformers (2007), there's "Roll out Strike Package Bravo." All the scenes in the AWACS were not scripted, Michael Bay just asked the real-life Air Force controllers to talk as if they were really in battle. One controller later said that Michael Bay really liked the phrase "Killbox 1-Alpha".
• During the climax to WarGames, the WOPR runs a series of nuclear war simulations on the monitors at NORAD. They are given names like "Hong Kong Variant", "Cuban Provocation", "SEATO Decapitation", and "Iceland Maximum". They might mean different things e.g. who launches their nukes first, but they all end up at same final state: "WINNER: NONE."

• xXx: State of the Union uses one of these this, both to establish a shared history between two characters, and in its Attack Pattern Alpha sense:
  Gibbons: You get any exercise in here?
  Stone: Twelve to 1 every day on the yard.
  Gibbons: 12:06 tomorrow. Bravo Delta High Sign.
  Stone: High Sign?
  Gibbons: High Sign. Be just like old times.
  Stone: You better hope not. Because last time out didn't have such a happy ending.

Literature

• The Star Wars Expanded Universe is, naturally, chock-full of these babies. Attack Run Rancor Alderaan Niner, anyone? Or how about a Cracken Twist, or a Thrawn Pincer? Not an Ackbar Slash, though. Never an Ackbar Slash.

• Subverted in Ender's Game: every team in Battle School has a large collection of formations and manoeuvres they use, letting the commander quickly and easily control everything his team does. Ender, on the other hand, tends to give his team much more general instructions, and the resulting flexibility lets them make mincemeat of their opponents.
• The James Bond novel Diamonds Are Forever has the hitmen Wint and Kidd use codes based on American Football signals between each other.
• Samuel R. Delany's Babel-17, quite apart from the languages, incorporeal navigation and biological modification going on, features a captain directing a fleet via clinical psychiatry terms. When the heroine grabs the mike off the captain and turns the tide of a battle by speaking to the ships in the same kind of language, she explains that it all made sense in the Babel-17 language she's been deciphering, indicating that there may be more to Babel-17 than just words.
• Justified in Honor Harrington, as the tactical officers are frequently shown analyzing various tactical situations beforehand and devising firing and movement patterns for use in such situations. Crews are later drilled in these patterns, which are, quite naturally, given reference names.
• Warhammer 40,000 novels:
  • In Dan Abnett's Brothers of the Snake, when Priad realizes that a fellow Space Marine has been possessed by a daemon, he calls on his squad for backup:
  "Damocles, form and cover, Hades spread!"
  • Abnett's Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies both use a combat language called Glossia, which is an elaborate and often invented-on-the-spot system of attack patterns and generally useful code.
• Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy: Justified. When Soviet bombers are making a last-ditch attack on the American-led NATO strike fleet that is tasked with retaking Iceland, one of the radar controllers orders the carrier aircraft into Plan Delta. From the context of the scene, this is presumably the plan worked up to deal with bombers closing from two directions, with heavy radar jamming support. Also, since Strike Fleet Atlantic had been clobbered by Soviet bombers much earlier in the book, having multiple plans to deal with the threat a second time makes good tactical sense.
• Dune has entire battle languages for the Sardaukar and household troops to give orders or report without being understood by their enemies.
• Dungeon Crawler Carl: Carl and Donut develop a playbook of standard techniques, such as "Monster Mash" (Donut raises a zombie with the "Second Chance" spell and copies it with "Clockwork Triplicate"), so that they can respond quickly when ambushed by monsters; even with the chat system, talking is not a free action.
• Shadowrun: Subverted in one of the novels, when an ex-government assassin gets mentally caught up in his training, and starts barking out code names for maneuvers to his teammates... who are street-thugs with no clue what he's talking about.
• The Ringworld Throne: Luis Wu teaches Chmee's son Acolyte the value of predetermined actions, and in training until performing said actions are second nature. He compares it to an astronaut being trained so that the first thing he does in an emergency situation is put on his pressure suit without actually having to think about doing it, and then asks if wtsai (the Kzinti knife-fighting martial art in which Acolyte has been trained) has a "a default maneuver; a move that is used when you are surprised or if you aren't really sure which move to use." Turns out there is one: the disembowel.
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians: In The Sea of Monsters, Percy Jackson and company use "Attack Plan Macedonia" on the Cyclops Polyphemus. It doesn't work so well for them.
• The True Game has a wide variety of these, whose names are derived from the setting's Character Class System (twelve individual magical talents in various combinations). The first three books (in order of publication) are named after some of these, specifically King's Blood Four, Necromancer Nine, and Wizard's Eleven.
• Legacy of the Aldenata: O'Neal develops a series of "plays", like those used in American football, to describe basic maneuvers for ACS troopers to perform when on the battlefield, for the sake of short commands that can be spoken quickly.
• Forgotten Realms: Played with in Pool of Darkness, in which the evil but not overly competent Red Wizard Marcus explains his plan for taking the city of Phlan with his army to his rather more professional undead general — who proceeds to patiently translate the individual maneuvers into proper military jargon as his "master" "explains" them to him...
• 1632: In 1634: The Baltic War, the only response Admiral Simpson needs to make to the Dane's ambush with a flotilla of torpedo boats attacking under cover of thick smoke is to pass the following order to his captain: "Have Ajax take the lead, then Achilles. The ironclads will follow behind them, and the squadron will assume Formation Charlie on a heading of zero-niner-five."
• The first Lost Fleet novel has John Geary training the ship commanders of the Alliance fleet how to fight in formation, since all the tactics they know involve the most basic formations to set up the fight, followed by all ships rushing towards the enemy completely disorganized. Then a Syndic fleet shows up, and Geary decides to test this training against a real enemy. He initially organizes the fleet into a basic formation called Alpha. Shortly before the enemy closes in, he reorganizes the fleet into formation Fox Five (AKA the Nutcracker). The trope is partly subverted in that Geary then proceeds to explain in detail each stage of the plan. The end result: Geary loses 5 ships (out of several hundred), while the entire enemy force is destroyed.
• Worm: The Yàngbǎn live this trope. With all their powers shared between every member, including a power that amplifies powers in close quarters, they drill every aspect of the powers available to them, and employ them in combat in response to terse orders in Mandarin Chinese. This is taken to the point that the Yàngbǎn are only referred to by number.
• Jean Johnson's Theirs Not to Reason Why does this in an interesting way. Brigadier General Mattox centralized all planning and decision-making to himself, which allowed the Salik to predict and overcome every move. Once she was put in charge, Ia decentralized all decision making almost down to the squad level, and directed her forces to run their own campaigns by simply reciting to them the code-words for the small-squad maneuvers that they had all learned in boot camp. Even though the Salik intercepted her orders, they didn't know what the code words meant, while the soldiers did, so her orders were clear to her own troops and of no use to the enemy.

Live-Action TV

• In the Airwolf episode "Condemned", "Strike Plan Beta" means nuke the place.
• Doctor Who:
  • The Ninth Doctor, in "Aliens of London", gets a squad of soldiers holding him at gunpoint under his command simply by shouting "Defence Pattern Delta" after someone screamed. Whether this is because he knew of the command structure (he worked for UNIT, after all) or simply relied on the fact that they didn't know who he was and were accustomed to following orders is not clear.
  • The Daleks actually get one in "The Stolen Earth". "Dalek Attack Formation Seven" seems to mean "Line up in front of the house and blow it up." Usually they just yell "EXTERMINATE!" and fire their lasers left and right.
• Played with repeatedly in the original Get Smart, where agents were constantly having to ask, "What was plan x again?"
• Power Rangers RPM had the Zords use "Attack Formation Delta", which appears to be military speak for "turn left" and the Megazord used "Attack Sequence Mustang", which means holding up the shield. Not really an "attack sequence", and it's hard to see where horses come into it, but whatever....
• Quark. In "The Good, the Bad and the Ficus", the crew are fighting an evil version of themselves. Captain Quark asks for Maneuver Plan Red, then we cut to a scenery-chewing Evil Quark demanding Attack Plan Red. Turns out they're both the same thing.
• "Vatican cameos" in Sherlock seems to be this trope, though it's not made clear exactly what it means.
• Used in every Star Trek series. It's just one shade above "evasive maneuvers", which is the third most popular Trek command in combat (after "Red Alert" and "raise shields").
  • Star Trek: The Original Series. In "The Apple", Captain Kirk orders Formation L, which involves everyone trudging through the jungle in single file. Presumably it's a small "l" instead of a capital "L".
  • Star Trek: Voyager:
    • Played With in "Message in a Bottle" as noted in the page quote above. The Doctor finds himself on the experimental Prometheus, and is trying to order it to defend itself from Romulan attack. The computer asks for an attack pattern. He tries "Attack pattern... Alpha?", which is a valid pattern. In practice, this attack pattern appears to be a "head straight for the target and keep firing" maneuver.
    • In "Basics" they have a spread of photon torpedoes fired in "dispersal pattern Sierra", evasive maneuvers Lambda (and Gamma) sequence, and a "standard Alpha search pattern".
  • Done repeatedly in Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, where a character would come up with a computer program to deal with the problem of the week and name it after himself. The climax would occur when the character would charge into the room and yell "Computer, run program My Name One!", which would then flood the room with Applied Phlebotinum and destroy the Negative Space Wedgie. The previous program of the same name would always be overwritten (or at least renamed to something less immediate), since they would never have to deal with that particular problem again (at least not on-camera).
  • The actual phrase "attack pattern ___" (typically Delta, Omega, Theta) comes up a lot when Sisko's commanding the Defiant (or sometimes as "evasive action, pattern ___"), and yet it never looks quite the same each time. In one episode where he ends up in the mirror universe, he orders mirror-O'Brien to use Delta against a massive Klingon juggernaut. O'Brien has no idea what Sisko's talking about, so he specifies "port to starboard, hard." Presumably, he walks O'Brien through the rest of the steps.
    • In that same mirror universe episode, Sisko orders a run at the aforementioned Klingon juggernaut, which mirror-O'Brien dubs "pattern suicide".
  • Star Trek: TNG also used a variant of this where they replaced the greek letter name with the name of an in-universe historical character. In one battle Commander Riker ordered "Attack Pattern Kirk One". A pleasant nod to a previous Enterprise captain, it also reveals that starfleet captains may have innovative combat maneuvers named after them.
  • The Picard Maneuver. In-universe, this is a tactic that exploited Faster-Than-Light Travel: if you time it right, the enemy will detect not just your ship but also the limited-to-lightspeed image of where-it-used-to-be, and then hopefully shoot the wrong one. On set, this was the nickname the other actors gave to Patrick Stewart's habit of tugging his costume's tunic down every time he sat down to ensure a camera friendly appearance (all the actors were instructed to do it, but Patrick Stewart did his in a most aggressive manner). In a Peter David spin-off novel, other captains call it the same thing.
    • The Picard Manuever was also used in the TNG pinball machine, to denote designer Steve Ritchie's signature shot (outer left loop to the upper-right flipper, then up the Delta Quadrant ramp) after getting the speed up to Warp 9 (Riker will then state "The Picard Maneuver, nice job").
  • Played with in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds where Pike expresses surprise Lt. Ortegas has a bunch of evasive maneuvers she's named after herself.
• In the second episode of Torchwood, Jack tells the team to get into "standard formation" when approaching a meteor site. This episode focuses on how Gwen is an outsider in this close-knit unit, so, of course, standard formation changes.

Radio

• I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue: Mornington Crescent has names for its various gambits and maneuvers much like Chess, though they're generally invented on the spot.

Roleplay

• Destroy the Godmodder's tvtropes session had this trope used by the sentient armors under wyld's control: Formation Omega Standard and Omega Phalanx.

Sports

• Any sports team has a series of codes and signs to alert teammates to the intended play; American football even has the huddle time period to plan out the exact move.
  • Apparently, "Blue 32" is the only play ever used in football, according to TV. In real life, colors and numbers are usually meaningless unless the play must be changed after the lineup because of how the defense lines up - more often, such callouts are used to get everyone on the offense on the same rhythm and count so that they can start moving at the precise moment they're legally allowed to.
  • Each team has different calls in rugby union for scrum plays and lineouts.
  • Or the Lions infamous "99" line out call, which was "punch the nearest Springbok"
  • One of the Cleveland Browns' notorious playoff failures is known as "Red Right 88", the name of the play called that resulted in a game-ending interception.
  • American football plays often use this sort of naming, especially when calling audibles since it's much more concise when your play clock is running out and timeouts are a precious commodity. Z-95 I-right flex!^note One possible interpretation: I-formation (halfback and fullback line up in a line behind the quarterback), tight end to the right of the offensive line, "Z" receiver (flanker, a receiver who's at least a yard behind the line of scrimmage and usually on the same side of the field as the tight end so in this case the right side) has option to run either a 9-route ("fly"/"go", just run upfield as fast as you can) or a 5-route ("out", run downfield a set number of yards like 10 and then turn 90 degrees to the sideline to shake a defender on you). It's quite a lot of instructions for just a few short words.
• In classical fencing every action has a name, and every part of the torso has a number based on its location and whether you attack palm up or palm down. This allows for easy description of attacks and defenses, and popular composed attacks have their own names, such as the "One-Two" (Feint attack by passing your blade below your opponent's into the opposite line, pass again below his parry, and lunge.)
  
  In England at least, the numbers are generally given in archaic French. Classical fencers in the US do as well. However, practitioners of Olympic fencing generally just use modern English numbers.
• Baseball teams do silent versions of this. For the battery (the pitcher and catcher), the catcher flashes a certain number of fingers to indicate what kind of pitch (such as "one" for fastball). For the team at bat, coaches deliver hand signals to tell the batter and any baserunners what to do (i.e., hit and run). Stealing these signals is known to happen.
• Compare the over-elaborate plays of American football - and their increasingly elaborate imitations in other sports - to Jackie Charlton's simple instruction to the Irish national football side.
  Keep the ball in their half and keep possession. Everything else follows on from that.
  • The Irish team under Charlton were at one point ranked fourth in the world. That's out of nearly two hundred countries that play football.
  • Attack Pattern Put 'em Under Pressure.

Tabletop Games

• Of all the factions in Warhammer 40,000, only the Tau do this to any extent.
  • Except when initiating Attack Protocol 23.
  • And initiating build routine 721.
  • Speaking of, the Steel Legion's Stormtroopers shout this as a battlecry.
• Several old Champions supplements dealing with superhero teams had code phrases the team used in combat. For example, in Red Doom, the Supreme Soviets team used codes such as "Purge" (two members team up against a single opponent) and "Vietnam" (harass the enemy constantly, don't give them time to think).
  • The idea here being to (a) give the NPC groups a plausible initial edge without adding to their actual power level and (b) get the player character team to at least seriously consider adopting the same practice; this is explicitly spelled out in several books as well.
• Paranoia
  • One old adventure includes a guard and a guardbot. When the guard said "Execute Option A" and fired at something, the guardbot would automatically fire at the same target.
  • Special Order 00000.0 commands the Vampirebot 666 to kill everyone in the room but the speaker (or something to that effect).
• The Brand X Hero's Guide for the free RPG Men and Supermen encourages this kind of thing among superhero groups. By calling for "Maneuver A" or "Maneuver B", the leader can give instructions without informing the opposition of what their intentions are (such as getting hostages clear of the battle, f'rinstance).
• Diplomacy has a large number of named opening approaches for every side, many named by the late Richard Sharp in his book The Game of Diplomacy, such as the "Balkan Gambit" (Austria moving a fleet from Trieste to Albania and an army from Budapest to Serbia, the movement of the second army naming the specific variation). Some more examples also include "Sealion" (France and Germany team up to invade England, derived from Nazi Germany planning to do that in World War II) and "Lepanto" (Italian moving aggressively against Turkey with Austrian help, named after the 1571 naval battle that stopped Ottoman expansion in the Mediterranean).
• This is a class of starship maneuvers in the Star Wars: Saga Edition RPG. They grant several persistent bonuses to fighters in flight, but you can only have one active at a time.
• BattleTech, predictably, has many maneuvers that sound like this. But the term Alpha Strike was reserved for when a Mech pilot decides that blowing out the heat sinks (and potentially blowing up the 'mech) is a lesser risk than not firing all the weaponry onboard at once.
  • Variation: The Sha Yu (Shark) is a uniquely Liao Battlemech, and a commonly accepted codephrase for pilots of the Sha Yu is "Blood in the water," which is shorthand for "I'm about to pull a flanking maneuver at top speed, followed by a couple minutes of sustained laser fire, followed by almost melting. Cover me."
• Rolemaster had three types of Combat Languages in its Arms Companion supplement. The Class I version was short, simple commands that could be shouted and easily understood in the noise of combat, such as "Charge!", "Flank right!" and "Fall back!".
• Star Fleet Battles has a lot of jargon relating to tactics, such as the Mizia Concept, Kaufman Retrograde and Gorn Anchor. Some of these come from supporting magazines where fans write in with suggestions about tactics.

Video Games

• Star Fox
  • In Star Fox 64, Fox orders his team to go into "All Range Mode" on several occasions. Which mainly means that the following fight happens in a specific area rather than the usual rail stage.
  • In Star Fox: Assault's opening, a Lylat officer orders his units to use "Battle Formation V", as in the shape of the formation.
• Command & Conquer: Generals — Zero Hour subverts when playing against the superweapon general Alexis Alexander. As one of her in-game taunts she broadcasts: All forces! Attack Pattern Alpha! Ha! Just kidding, General... Who would name a flight pattern "alpha"?
• Squadrons in the Homeworld series of space RTS can have different formations depending on situation, like forming a wedge when attacking or spacing out when on the defensive. They're almost playing with the trope, though, as the formations actually have descriptive names like "X" and "Sphere".
• The Crab Spider Epic Archetype in City of Villains has an ability referred to as the Omega Maneuver. Said maneuver consists of the Crab Spider teleporting a bomb into the midsts of an enemy group.
• In Final Fantasy X, if all three Magus Sisters are available simultaneously, Yuna can command them to "Work together!", and they will join forces to deliver the almighty Delta Attack. Although this command appears in several other games in the series, it's recycled from Final Fantasy IV in that it's a joint attack where each Sister does her own thing, not a combination attack.
• Enclave Soldiers in Fallout 3 have a tendency to shout "Attack pattern (insert greek letter here)" when attacking the player. They then proceed to do exactly what they were doing before the order was given.
• Similarly, enemies in Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas, have a variety of battle tactics and messages that they shout to each other. Occasionally, if the player is killed, the soldier that kills him or her will radio to his friends "LIMA OSCAR LIMA, over." Fun if you know the phonetic alphabet.
• Iji has the Alpha Strike, but this one is pretty close to the actual Military Alpha Strike. See Real Life below.
• In Insecticide, the Robo bugs casually announce one of their plans to be executed on their signal, randomly chosen from one of their lists.
• Squad formations are used heavily in Operation Flashpoint. As squad leader the player can order their men to assume any one of several formations at any given time. Each one is suitable for a different situation — column is best for fast movement, wedge is the general-purpose combat formation (for when you're not sure where the enemy are), line concentrates fire to the front, and so on.
• In the Japanese version of Cannon Dancer, the Teki refer to their final joint attack as "Die Rudeltaktik."
• As per the Star Trek examples above, it's used in Star Trek Online.
  • Attack Patterns Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omega are all Tactical techniques which are extremely useful in battle (Evasive maneuvers, as mentioned above, is also available). Gamma is given to a Jem'Hadar ship, for whatever reason. Pilot Specialists also get Attack Pattern Lambda, and there's Attack Pattern Tuvok of all things (which is basically just the buffs from both Alpha and Omega Patterns combined).
    • While they are super useful as buffs or debuffs, they do not in any way change the movement or fire pattern of your or your allies ship(s). Similarly, they have "Dispersion patterns" for mines and torpedoes.
  • Also has what came to be called alpha strikes from A.I. opponents. When presented with multiple enemies, the entire enemy fleet would target one player at a time, focusing fire, and eliminating them almost instantly, before doing the same thing to the next player. Patches have since changed it so that this can't happen often.
• The MechWarrior series, as with its Battletech progenitor, allows an Alpha Strike that fires all available weapons simultaneously. Practically guaranteed to overheat the mech and force a temporary shutdown, but if you need that enemy Atlas dead immediately (Protip: you do), it's probably your best option. Except for certain loadouts/games where you'll explode from the sudden heat buildup.
• The Lord of the Rings Online has the "Fellowship Maneuver", where every member gets to choose one of four effects (damage, damage over time, healing, power restoring), that combined make up a coordinated attack. If players sucessfully mixes effects in specific orders, the attack ends up more powerful than if they'd simply all have choosen the same effect, and may also have other benefits like summoning a oathbreaker to help out in the fight.
• If a team manages to organize themselves enough to do one in Team Fortress 2, the effect on the opposing team can be devastating.
  • Or in any multiplayer game, really.
• Defied in Road of the Dead. A piece of dialogue has a US Army soldier report that his unit is doing one of these, only for his commander to abandon the codes, as they are fighting a Zombie Apocalypse.
• The Escape Velocity fandom has three well-known maneuvers that take advantage of the series' AI tactics:
  • The "Monty Python Maneuver" makes use of the series' partial aversion of Space Friction to fly away from multiple targets while shooting backwards. The name refers to the instances in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where the knights yell "Run away!"
  • The "Not the Nine O'Clock News Maneuver" allows the player to land on blockaded planets. Instead of blasting your way through, you lure the enemy away from the planet, then double back around the enemy fleet.
  • The "Qaanol Maneuver", named after its inventor, involves using an absurdly fast ship to draw the enemy's fire while your escorts make the kill.
• In the Freespace mod Blue Planet, one mission involves a couple of code-named attack strategies ("CARTWHEEL" and "JACKKNIFE"). However, the strategies were explained in detail during the mission briefing, making this an unusually realistic example of the trope.
  Yangtze: The Carthage's screen is still holding. Captain Kyrematen wants to go with the secondary attack plan.
  Indus: Captain Sorensen agrees. Yangtze, Insuperable, slow to one-third. Comms, coded burst to second striker package as follows: "Strike Two: We are go for contingency JACKKNIFE. Transmitting arrival vectors."
  Katana: Roger, Indus. JACKKNIFE assault acknowledged. Arrival in two minutes.
• The Grineer of Warframe loved go to into "Combat Formation Bravo." Guesses to what it meant are as good as anyone else's. It seemed to be simply "stand there and shoot at the space ninjas." Sadly, it was removed when the Grineer got their own Conlang.
  • In the Warframe forums, "Combat Formation Bravo" is sometimes used jokingly to refer to pathing glitches such as enemies stacking on top of each other or running around in circles.
• The new Maximum Break mechanic of Second Original Generation is this. Most of the Combination Attacks in the game are also examples, like the SRX Team's Formation R or Kyosuke and Excellen's Rampage Ghost. Kyosuke will sometimes even mention changing up the pattern to confuse the enemy.
• Inazuma Eleven GO 2: Chrono Stone uses this in a villainous context to highlight the clinical precision and efficiency of El Dorado's teams. While most hissatsu techniques have distinctive names that are shown when they are used, those used by Protocol Omega are designated by the move's type and a number, such as "Shoot Command 01", or "Tactics AX3".
• During the random crimes in Spider-Man 2, criminals will occasionally shout "Execute Escape Pattern Epsilon!" before jumping into a getaway car and driving off.
• Mercenary Force: Your selected four mercenaries can assume four attack patterns in the game - Formation of the Forest, Formation of the Fire, Formation of the Wind and Formation of the Mountain. Part of the strategy of the game is to choose wisely which formation to use depending on the terrain you cross, the enemies you face, your exact roster and even their marching formation.

Web Animation

• RWBY: From Volume 2, Team RWBY began using attack names that symbolise a combination of a pair of powers to achieve specific effects, such as Ice Flower (Ruby's gun and Weiss's ice powers), Bumblebee (Blake's weapon reach and Yang's strength), Ladybug (Ruby and Blake's combination of speed and range), Checkmate (Weiss's Super-Empowering with Blake's range), Freezerburn (Yang's fire and Weiss's ice to obscure the battlefield with steam) ^note Some of the names (Bumblebee, Ladybug and Freezerburn) were a nod to the fandom's shipping names; the creators deliberately avoided giving all of the attacks shipping names for fear of being seen as ship baiting (Ice Flower instead of White Rose and Checkmate instead of Monochrome), but didn't realise until it was too late that some fans preferred Checkmate to Monochrome.. In Volume 3, they then parody the fandom shipping names when Jaune fails to convince his own team to adopt similar attack strategies after they start arguing about the quality of the names.

Webcomics

• Angel Moxie subverts it:
  Alex: Executive decision! Plan Sigma-9!
  Tristan: Which one was that?
  Riley: Something about running away, I think.
• Sean and Wormwood parodies the trope. Maneuver 14-B is "Don't let the giant worm knock me off the ledge." It also means "Pick me up some kettle chips while you're out." You kind of have to figure it out from context.
• In Nuzlocke Comics, when Ruby takes on the Grass gym:
  "Okay team, run 'Destiny Red'"
  "Uh, which plan is that again?"
  "Spam. Forever."
• The Whiteboard combines this with Noodle Implements here, when discussing strategy on an "outlaw" ^note little to no rules paintball field.

Web Original

• Whateley Universe: In Ayla and the Birthday Brawl, Team Kimba discusses coming up with code phrases for regularly-used tactics, based upon their shenenigans. For instance, "Halloween" means support the team's heavy hitters, which is the tactic they used to avert the tragedy at Halloween.
• Discussed in response to one of the runner-up entries in the 2013 Lyttle Lytton Contest:
  What's funny about this isn't the exaggeration, because it isn't really exaggerated.  Do a search on "Attack Plan Theta" and you will get dozens of hits.  Distilling a whole genre down to this and submitting it to the contest is like hanging a urinal in an art gallery: the change of context encouranges you to think about things you might take for granted.  Like, take this pseudo-military spacewar jargon.  If you take a job writing a genre piece, this comes with the territory.  There have been days when turning "hero blows up the station somehow" into "'Prepare to utilize Attack Plan Theta on the rear defensive shield!'" was what I did at work that day.  And I don't know what Attack Plan Theta is.  And the audience doesn't know what Attack Plan Theta is.  As far as the communication of meaning is concerned, this phrase is an empty vehicle.  And yet it really is a requirement of the genre — this sort of sequence doesn't feel "authentic" without it.  Isn't that funny?

Web Videos

• Oxventure: The Oxventurers Guild have devised an attack plan known as "Bear Down Protocol". This consists of Merilwen the elven druid turning into a cat, being scooped up by Dob the half-orc, and thrown at the target's face, at which point Merilwen turns into a bear in midair.

Western Animation

• Often used in Avengers Assemble, usually declared by Captain America or Black Widow, and often with Hawkeye snarking that he can never remember which one it is, or Hulk grumbling that he doesn't care, he just wants to smash things.
• In the second episode of Batman: The Animated Series, "Christmas With the Joker", one reason you can tell that the show is still finding its feet is that "Robin! Operation: Cause and Effect!" is apparently Batman Code for "Robin, would you kindly run real fast and blow a hole in that wall with a grenade, please and thank you?" This is the sort of thing that would feel more at home in Batman (1966) starring Adam West and Burt Ward than what Batman: TAS eventually became.
• Biker Mice from Mars
  • The series absolutely loves this trope (well, at least the '90s version did). They seemed to have an applicable plan for every situation they encountered, and never used the same formation twice. Which is justified because they actually are soldiers with a high degree of training and military expirience.
  • Also lampshaded during the "Biker Knights of the Round Table" two-parter, when Throttle calls out for a maneuver they've never heard of before, then explains he's just "added it to [their] repertoire".
• Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys invokes this trope every time they split their big ship into a bunch of little ships.
• Code Lyoko: Used infrequently by the Lyoko Warriors. Mocked in episode "Music Soothes the Savage Beast":
  Odd: Lateral crossing pattern and pincer strategy.
  Yumi: What's that in English?
  Odd: Let's go!
  [later, with later Ironic Echo...]
  Yumi: Lateral flying pattern and pincer strategy.
  Odd: Are you speaking English?
• Dexter's Laboratory, Dial M for Monkey short "Last But Not Beast". When Dexter accidentally releases a giant monster in Japan, a group of attack ships commanded by Agent Honeydew appears and attacks it. She orders the ships to use Attack Pattern Omega.
• DuckTales (1987): Huey, Dewey and Louie have a "plan B" when they don't get their way (which only appears in the episode "Scrooge's Last Adventure"). "Plan B" means "lie down on the floor, cry, scream and kick". The clockmaker who was subjected to this gave in. (Interestingly, Fenton has the same "plan B".)
• The Fairly OddParents!: Timmy has various codes for oft-needed wishes or for the specific troubles his wishes cause.
  Timmy: Wanda help! We’re at Crisis Mode Alpha Niner Delta!
  Wanda: Oh no! Alpha Niner Delta? Cosmo lost his wand to a fictional character from Missouri?
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy has the trio go into "Defense Formation Alpha"(?) when on-again off-again villain Nergal showed up to court Billy's aunt.
• Futurama: Protocol 62 is mentioned as the standard way to stop an epidemic. It's never specified what it is, but it apparantly involves a large number of piranhas.
• Hercules: The Animated Series: One episode features Hercules trying out a row of plans named after the letters of the Greek alphabet. (Plan Alpha, Plan Beta, Plan Gamma, ect.) After reaching Plan Omega, Phil declares that they have run out of plans.
• Kim Possible: Subverted in "Rufus vs. Commodore Puddles": "Full Frontal Assault by Giant Canine: that's a four-one-slash-five-S scenario." Later: "That looks like a four-nine-slash-E-Z scenario: Rescue by Giant Subterranean Rodent."
• Metalocalypse's Charles Ofdensen: "Put the boots to him... medium-style."
• In the penultimate episode of Once Upon a Time... Space, all the ships of the Cassiopeian fleet are ordered to fire without intimation on the Humanoid navy. Most of their shots are deflected by the Humanoid shields, and just a few enemy ships are destroyed. The counterattack on the Cassiopeian fleet is far more destructive, and things go really downhill from there.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998) make fun of this. Blossom called out "Attack pattern Alpha Omega Atari!", and the girls flew toward the monster, while their beam trails looked like the Atari logo. Well, Atari was once part of Warner Communications.^note Which has since become Time Warner, the parent company of Turner Entertainment, whose Cartoon Network originally aired the show. Additionally, Time Warner now owns the post-1984 Atari (i.e., the "Atari Games") catalog (again).
• In ReBoot Megabyte has command of a significant military force so this sort of thing pops up from time to time.
  Megabyte: Prepare for operation plan code 214.
  Binomes: NO! Not plan 214! [screaming]
  Single Binome: I kinda like it.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks:
  • "Envoys": During command training, Ransom suggests that Rutherford try the Janeway Protocol in the next simulation, but doesn't explain what this is. When Rutherford tries doing this, it somehow gets every single child on the ship vented into space.
  • "Moist Vessel": Ransom orders Evasive Maneuver Alpha when the terraforming material threatens to engulf the ship.
  • "The Stars at Night" as Mariner lead the charge of the California-class fleet against the mad AI onboard the USS Aledo by "translating" the buzzing of a fly man that looks like Boimler as "Attack Pattern Delta, full spread!", which translates to "Nuke the everliving hell out of that ship!"
• Teen Titans (2003): The H.I.V.E. make great use of this: "Gamma formation!" The trope name is even part of their self-introduction to the Titans in one episode, to contrast with the disorganized heroes:
  Beast Boy: Who are these guys? And what's a "kludge-head"?
  Gizmo: We are the H.I.V.E.!
  Mammoth: Your worst nightmare.
  Jinx: And this is Attack Pattern Alpha!
• The Tick tried to get Arthur to play along with specialty attack naming. One special move was supposed to be Arthur catching the Tick in mid-air... too bad the 7-foot galoot was too heavy for Arthur to lift!
• Transformers: Animated
  • At one point, the Autobots use an attack pattern called Omega Formation to attack Blitzwing. Since the Animated Autobots aren't exactly paragons of military competence, it doesn't end well.
  • A later episode has Ratchet order the ship (which is about to crash) to deploy its "emergency defense mode, code name: Omega" which prompts the ship to transform into its robot mode: Omega Supreme. Optimus had tried to do the same thing in the first episode, but the ship was being stingy with Energon at the time and overrode him. That and Omega Supreme was still Only Mostly Dead at that point.
• WordGirl has several of numerically identified "emergency plans" ranging from "spray the giant robot with water" to "take a bite out of the statue made of meat". The latter was immediately Lampshade Hung by the Interactive Narrator.
• Xiaolin Showdown. "Dragon Ex Kumai Formation!" Also "Wudai Orion Formation!" It's the same, but instead of just increasing their elemental powers, it goes a lot further and turns them into color-coded silhouetted forces of nature.
• Young Justice (2010): "Maneuver Seven" is used repeatedly, which involves one of the Team helping launch another member at the enemy.

Real Life

• The earliest recorded use of this would be in the Sun Bin's Art of War (a descendant of Sun Tzu); Sun Bin described several specific formations to be drilled into the army, with flag, drums and horns being the way to communicate this. It is also expected that these formations were in use for a time before, as both Sun Tzu and Sun Bin used tried and tested methods in their works.
• Ancient Japanese military formations were described by names, and troops were drilled into how to get into these formations quickly and efficiently when the signal flags were waved. These were derived from the Chinese practices.
• A US Army infantry platoon has 9 basic battle drills numbered 1, 1A, and 2-8. They cover activities ranging from reacting to an ambush to knocking out a bunker. Learning them is one of a new soldier's most important responsibilities.
• Gaining an advantage through tactical manoeuvre is truly one of The Oldest Ones in the Book and was one of the earliest indications of warfare evolving into an activity taken up by professional, trained armies. Before the widespread use of firearms, the ability for a force to retain close order cohesion and stay organized on the battlefield was of great tactical advantage. The use of drill to teach soldiers how to move effectively under order during situations of duress separated a disciplined military (and some mercenary companies for that matter) from an untrained rabble that only knew two tactics: "charge" and "rout". Various methods were used to get units to change formations, manoeuvre, attack, and withdraw; musical instruments were common around the world and standards and signal flags were used to give orders and identify friend from foe. Form line and advance or form square and hold ground may not have the dramatic ring of "Engage attack pattern upsilon zeta!" but the essential concept of predefined manoeuvre for tactical advantage remains the same.
• For warships and warplanes, formations have remained critical for both offensive and defensive reasons. Offensively, you want to ensure that as much as possible of the firepower onboard the ships and planes (guns and bombload) are can be concentrated on desired targets as possible. Defensively, you want to ensure that defensive armaments, sensors, and lookouts onboard ships and planes can cover all possible approaches to guard against possible attacks. For example, bomber formations during World War II were designed to ensure that machine guns on every bomber in the formation protected an entire group of as many as a dozen or more bombers (and each formation covered other formations and so forth). Breaking up bomber formations was an important aspect of interceptor tactics.
• Different armies used different signaling devices, but the concept remained the same, whether that signal was given with a flag, a drum, a horn, or in some other manner. In modern times, radios have mostly taken over. Regardless of which method is used, its important to make sure that only friendly forces can interpret it, which is why such messages are often given code names or other forms of encryption (that, and making them easier to order on the fly)
  • Fighter aircraft have many types of often colorfully-named maneuvers — the Thach Weave, the Pugachev's Cobra, the Split S, etc.
• One of the main advantages of the Roman Army was exactly this: a series of pre-determined manouvers that would be executed in battle upon command, be it the "Mittite!" shouted by the centurions to unleash hundreds of javelins on the enemy right before the meelee to more complex pincers, alternations and moves signaled by the sound of the buccina.
• "Schema F" is a still-used German proverb for doing something the usual way. It evolved out of an attack pattern used during WWI.

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