Humans Are Warriors

In the grim darkness of the far future, humanity's hat is a little green flak helmet.^note That and bastardry. But then so is everybody else's.

"The most persistent sound which reverberates through man's history is the beating of war drums."

— Arthur Koestler

Somewhere between Humans Are the Real Monsters, Humans Are Special, Humans Are Survivors and Humanity Is Superior lies this trope, the polar opposite of Humans Are Diplomats. Compared to the other races of the galaxy, or at least the other 'good' races, humans are violent, warlike savages who revel in chaos and destruction. However, this is not necessarily a bad thing; at worst, the more 'civilized' races may look down on us, but they acknowledge that we're not a plague to be wiped out. Or at least they acknowledge that it might be somewhat inadvisable to try.

The trope takes one of three forms:

• Humans are Survivors: In the first form, humans are helping themselves with their savagery; the technologically, physically, magically, and/or mentally superior aliens would wipe us out or enslave us if not for our courage, tenacity, and willingness to pull crazy stunts in battle and the experience of thousands of years of conflict. Look for humanity to attempt to capture and reverse-engineer as much of the aliens' superior technology (or magic) as possible, while aliens either keep the pressure on through sheer resource advantage or begin to learn some of our own tricks to turn against us. Other aliens, inspired by our example, may rise against their keepers or speak out on our behalf in the Galactic Senate, so we can eventually come to have claim to our space that we don't have to constantly fight to protect. This version is frequently related to Earth Is a Battlefield.
• Humans are Useful: The second form of this trope makes humans useful to other aliens. Maybe the "good" aliens have been fighting a losing war against the "evil" aliens due to psychological limitations, numbers, or lack of training in the art of war. Maybe they are evenly matched or even winning against the enemy but want someone else to get shot at for a change. By working together with humans, they can actually put their advanced technology (or magic) to use effectively; in turn, humans gain the peacetime benefits of the aliens' advanced technology. Other aliens may be less scrupulous about the relationship, considering us less 'valuable partners' and more 'Battle Thralls'. So long as they are able to enforce the relationship through their technology, this trope remains in the second form... but expect us to keep an eye out for a chance to break free of our insect overlords, no matter how benevolent they seem.
• Humans are Soldiers: In the third variation, far from being pacifists, the aliens are a Proud Warrior Race to the max. Problem is, they're so focused on honor duels, individual prowess, and/or personal-scale violence, that they can't bring together armies and fleets, or are simply ineffectual when they do because they won't or can't cooperate and establish a chain of command (or if they do, it may be subject to highly destabilizing procedures). Thus despite actually being less skilled at raw violence, humanity ends up being the ones able to band together and fight wars, and fulfill this trope. As the experience shows, regardless of any aliens, this version is definitely Truth in Television: by the end of the Napoleonic wars, German theorists proposed the concept of "Total War", in which all the society's resources would be applied to achieve victory. This essentially meant that war changed from a tool of dominance into a tool of obliteration. And, indeed, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the wars that humanity fought among itself were waged with an increasingly industrial approach, centering on efficiency of slaughter — until we became terrified of ourselves. This one can be combined with Humans Are Diplomats, since soldiers also know that peace is the end goal of fighting. This can also cross over with Puny Earthlings, since just because humans are physically weak it doesn't mean they don't know how to wage war or otherwise compensate for their weakness.

Compare Heroic Spirit. Contrast Humans Are Diplomats, where we're the ones keeping the peace for everyone else.

It's probably advisable not to include Real Life examples, since, as noted on the page for Proud Warrior Race, it's hard to name a human culture that isn't known for having something that could be called a warrior tradition.

This has led to a genre of science fiction politely referred to as "HFY" ("Humanity, Fuck Yeah!"), about humanity turning out to be much tougher and stronger than alien species. Often this involves describing the very real but absurd-sounding capabilities of humans compared to other animals.

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Examples of the "Survivors" variation include:

Anime & Manga

• Doraemon: An alien astronaut from Mars concludes that this is the nature of humans after witnessing Nobita and Doraemon happily watching a TV show about a Sentai beating up aliens, convincing the rest of the aliens not to make any further contact with humans and flee from their home planet for good. The Irony is, said aliens are created by Nobita and Doraemon, and the reason of them doing this in the first place is to have the Martians make First Contact with humans.
• Subverted in Dragon Ball. Vegeta tries to get the people of Earth to give Goku energy so he can make a Spirit Bomb strong enough to kill Buu, by telling them it's their first step towards becoming a warrior race like the Saiyans, but nobody listens to him.
• Guyver: With the human villains, Chronos, who find Uranus technology, reverse-engineer it, make far more powerful versions of it, and plan to use it to find the Uranus and kill them.
• Robotech/Super Dimension Fortress Macross: A series about an alien ship that crashes on Earth, giving humans access to advanced technology. Humanity weaponizes the tech and not long after finds itself embroiled in war with giant aggressive humanoid aliens (over a powerful energy source in Robotech / because said aliens have trouble understanding the concept of peace in Macross). One of the aliens, who are supposed to be Proud Warrior Race Guys, is actually shocked and impressed that humans, from a very young age, actively participate in numerous combat simulations.
  • While Robotech has humanity becoming more and more warlike, the Macross franchise as a whole does quite the opposite, with humanity's main strength being its peacetime culture (and The Power of Rock).
    • It's not that humanity doesn't become more and more of a military superpower — it does (the Battle for Earth in 2010 has a single Zentradi fleet basically burn Earth to a crisp, by 2045 Zentradi are fully integrated into the human civilisation, and by 2067 a single PMC is able to subjugate a significant up-and-rising empire), it's just that humans have simply added Idol Singers and the Power of Rock to their weapon repertoire.
• This idea pops up from time to time in the Gundam franchise, despite that it's only broken the Absent Aliens rule once in its three decades of existence. However, the Big Bad is frequently someone who believes that humanity should embrace its warlike instincts, usually citing whatever Lensman Arms Race is going on as proof that warfare is the only way for humanity to advance into newer and better technological eras. (This kind of villain is usually pitted against a protagonist who has arrived at the conclusion that Humans Are Diplomats is better.)

Comic Books

• At the end of Cowboys & Aliens, the benevolent alien resistance decide that humans would be the perfect addition to their army against the aliens that attacked Earth and countless other planets.
• Drafted is about aliens forcibly conscripting humans in an interstellar war.
• This trope is discussed in the Marvel Universe, with intergalactic empires considering humans to be this in light of repeatedly kicking the crap out of Thanos, Galactus and the Phoenix Force, and to be the new and rising intergalactic power. Unusual example in that it isn't the whole species that has managed to do this, with most of them being just as baseline and mundane as in real life, but due to the unusually large concentration of metabeings on the planet. It's been implied that this is the result of the Celestials having tampered with the human genetic code in its infancy, which is just starting to show itself through the genesis of mutants.
  • During one installment, Doctor Strange, a powerful sorcerer, is recruited by nearly all-powerful magical beings known as the Vishanti for a war of quite literally cosmic proportions against their archenemies, the Trinity of Ash. They give him a lot more magic then he had and hope he kicks enough ass to make up for it. He does.
  • Ultimate Galactus Trilogy: After the victory against Gah Lak Tus, a creature that no race in the universe has ever defeated, Fury proudly declares that humans can defeat anyone.
• In Paperinik New Adventures, humans are the only race that can match the Evronian warlike nature... Meaning we're one of two races with even a sliver of a chance to stop them, forcing the Evronians to take an unusually cautious approach to avoid a defeat (the two Bad Futures where the Evronians successfully conquer Earth even show that the Earthlings still fight even after all nations have collapsed under the invasion, with the one in "Might and Power" having them soldier on three centuries after the invasion) and prompting some survivors of Xerba to try and come to Earth to warn us and give us their advanced technology (the Xerbians being the only others who could have turned back their invasion thanks to their superior technology).

Fan Works

• Renegade: The Command & Conquer/Mass Effect crossover. Humans are essentially this. The main strength of humanity is that they became tough, strong, resourceful, and resilient because they were surviving on a world where the very ground was trying to kill them. As a result, they developed a mentality of aggressive, conservative militancy and devised advanced technology to simply survive on their homeworld. Once they got off Earth in large numbers (thanks to mass effect technology) they turned the same Green Rocks ravaging their homeworld into the means to fund an aggressive expansion into the galaxy, which subsequently allowed them to form a political/military bloc independent of the Citadel. Between their tech, mindset, and economic power, GDI became a major player in galactic politics mere decades after making First Contact.
  • Its prequel, Eagle's Fall, goes into detail on this, at least with regards to the Turians' reactions during the war on Shanxi. The GDI humans' ferocity and technology forces the Hierarchy's troops into a brutal ground war that costs them a tremendous amount of lives and equipment, and while the human defenders are eventually overwhelmed, they force the Turians to respect their capacity for violence. The commanding officer of the invasion force is concerned of what would happen if such a humanity would ever reach a level of strength to challenge the Hierarchy on an interstellar scale after having been effectively enslaved by the Hierarchy...of course, humanity already is at that level...
  • Later on in the story, there's a scene where Sparatus asks Garrus what he thinks of GDI humanity. Garrus essentially says that they're what the krogan could have been, and when asked if humans' aggression, ruthlessness, and penchant for raw firepower are flaws or strengths, Garrus says "Yes."
• In the AU fic Mass Effect: End of Days, the Citadel races regards humanity and their partner-race, the synthetic Vision, as this. Despite the heavy presence of A.i., the Council realizes humanity is dangerous in other ways, just by virtue of getting along with synthetics. Since First Contact was peaceful this time around, the galaxy has no real idea of what to expect in a war, leaving them at a disadvantage. The Alliance never discovered eezo or relays, they have vastly differing technologies and weapons, coupled with a tenacious attitude and the industrial capabilities a friendly A.I brings with it. This in turn means that no one is really sure how to handle them. The Council in particular is very concerned with the Alliance's unprecedented rise in power in the galaxy and wants to do something about it, but acknowledges the fact that the Alliance is a bad opponent.
  Valern: "I believe they are the single most dangerous enemy our races have ever encountered."
  (...)
  Tevos: "They would have no reason for an attack(...)This is a species which wants to live, not die."
  Valern: "Which increases the challenge facing us a hundredfold."
  • The first examples of warfare the rest of the galaxy see is a garrison fending off a combined assault by Collectors and batarian pirates, being relieved by the Geth. The Alliance then proceeds to pick the Hegemony apart, while simultaneously launching an assault at the Collector base. Only when all this is over and done with, does the Council realize just how dangerous the Alliance can be. Valern in particular seems to believe it is worth knowing their history, and is none too pleased with the findings.
  "A species which fights wars like that are going to be...very hard to beat."
  — Valern, in regards to footage from WW2.
• XSGCOM series, being a fusion of the Stargate series and the X-COM series, is a definite example of this. Being the spawn of two examples of this trope, the crazy insanity and massive explosions are only ramped up. P90's? Try elerium plasma weapons stolen from renegade Asgard. The Goa'uld bring in the staff weapons? We steal those, cut them up, and make Gatling Staffs and Gatling Staff ''Cannons.'' Loki unleashes psychic troops? We bring out our own. The Kull are a problem? Bring out the Powered Armor with more weapons than a decent-sized army. Wraith attacking Atlantis? Hello, orbital Naquadria weapons! It turns out that the ancients manipulated our DNA a long, long time ago to make us really, really good at war. As of the second story, the Ancients are beginning to wonder if they succeeded ''too well.''
• In many Recursive Fanfiction War Fic stories based on deconstructing The Conversion Bureau, this is very much the case (as well as Humans Are Survivors) when humans and ponies go to war.
  • In The Conversion Bureau: Not Alone, humanity declares war against Celestia's Assimilation Plot and wins easily on a global scale, forcing Equestria to retreat. It's even lampshaded as Celestia laments that the ground troops that were fighting to reclaim South Africa and defeated the elite Royal Guards were poorly trained rookies that were fighting way out of their element and with outdated equipment. Not only that, but it takes years to get a pony trained to be an elite Royal Guard; by contrast, humans only need a few weeks of training to become reasonably decent frontline soldiers that can kill those guards, and that's before getting to the simple fact that humanity has sheer numerical superiority and more advanced tech on their side as well.
  • The Negotiationsverse takes place in the aftermath of the Conversion War where humanity won the war against Equestria's invasion and Assimilation Plot. The humans put up a fierce enough resistance in the first four years of the war to make it a stalemate in terms of general combat despite losing almost a third of their population and civilization, attempts to demoralize them by destroying key cities and holy sites only made them fight harder, and once they figured out a way around the ponies' magical advantages and got through the barrier, the ponies were thoroughly defeated in a series of Curb Stomp Battles. Specifically, it took about one year after the Anti-Magic Thalmann Generators were deployed for humanity to decisively win the war. In the fourth story in the series, Useless, Rainbow Dash (one of the few remaining ponies still loyal to Celestia's cause) admits that she just can't understand how the humans could defeat them when they'd previously fought other beings that were nearly godlike by comparison.
  • In The Conversion Bureau: The Other Side of the Spectrum and the Continuity Reboot Spectrum, it's made clear that the Conversion War would've been over pretty quickly if the ponies didn't have the barrier. The Mirror Universe Discord even warned Queen Celestia that the humans were not going to go down easily without a fight before she killed him to take his magic.
• In No Gods, Only Guns, humans are considered warriors specifically because they're that bloody crazy. They're as well-armed as the turians, as violent as the krogan, and have bodies as malleable as the vorcha, though the latter is due to "pummeling their own DNA into submission." Entering close combat with humans is considered "a terminal tactical error."
• In Child of the Storm, Thor believes this about humanity (it's suggested that so do most Asgardians, which is why they rather like us). Dumbledore, on the other hand, believes that Humans Are Survivors, and, therefore, are far more dangerous than if they were simply warriors. After all, survival carries the requirement of innovation, and Thor notes that Tony Stark, in his quest to survive, created a power source on par with stuff used by most of the powerful alien civilisations and built a battle suit that could take down a god. Admittedly, said god (Volstagg) had been going easy, not wanting to accidentally squish Tony like a tube of toothpaste, but he still got choke slammed into the floor.
• Humans are revealed to be this in the Mass Effect story Mesozoic Effect. Because of their glacially slow technological advancement and inclination toward pacifism, the dinosaurs^note who were sapient, don't think about it too much were unable to fight the Reapers themselves. So they created a virus that would stimulate aggression and mental development in mammals. Humans were the end result.
• In Pony Gear Solid, according to Discord, this is what makes humans special. Apparently, humans were able to fight off an alicorn god-emperor and his invading army millennia ago.
  "Humans may be primitive, paranoid, and petty, but they still sent Grandpappy Alicorn home with his tail between his legs." (Discord's) voice became silky, almost seductive. "That was millennia ago, Luna. I shudder to think of what they can do now. Let me know how it goes."
• Tarkin's Fist: The Empire is accustomed to conquering planets of a similar technological level to their own. And so, upon learning that Earth possesses a less advanced technological base, they assume that the Earth's people will be easily subjugated. Their assumption is quickly proven wrong. What Earth lacks in laser weapons and spaceships, it more than makes up for with strategic planning, intelligence, and sheer bloody minded ruthlessness.

Films — Live-Action

• The Avengers opens with The Other summarizing his alliance with Loki, and rhetorically asking what the human species can do against them but burn. Then five humans and an Asgardian (mostly Badass Normals, supported by a few scattered National Guardsmen and a single tactical nuke) stop their invasion in its tracks, and obliterate their planet-conquering army and armada inside of twenty minutes, causing him to revise his opinion in The Stinger.
  The Other: Humans. They are not the cowering wretches we were promised! They stand. They are unruly, and therefore cannot be ruled. To challenge them is to court death.
  • Continued in Avengers: Infinity War. Thanos's Chitauri, the same ones that failed utterly against a small force of humans, are shown to be able to conquer other planets fairly easily. Thanos's second set of mooks, the Outriders + Black Order, are all exterminated over the course of the film by Earth's defenders— again, mostly Badass Normals, and a very small number of them at that. Additionally, space-born gunslinger Rocket Raccoon is quite impressed by Earth weaponry, and offers to buy Bucky's M249 SAW from him.
• Battle Beyond the Stars: Space Cowboy, who is a member of just one of the Proud Warrior Races needed for this job. He is also the only character in the whole movie who is actually from the planet Earth...
• The opening narration of Pacific Rim explains that one day, a gigantic alien creature came out of a rift in the ocean and slaughtered a coastal city, followed by repeated attacks by similar creatures. Humanity swept aside all international problems and quickly created the Jaeger program: Giant co-piloted mecha that could go toe-to-toe with the Kaiju. Humanity then proceeds to wipe the floor with them.
  Pentecost: I've never believed in the End Times. We are mankind. Our footprints are on the moon. When the last trumpet sounds and the Beast rises from the pit— we will kill it.
• In Independence Day: Resurgence, humans become the first species in the entire universe to kill a Harvester queen. Because of humanity's military prowess, the Sphere asks the humans to lead the interstellar resistance against the Harvesters.

Literature

• Animorphs: Where various aliens (usually Andalites) note just how vicious a place Earth is and how addicted to fighting each other humans are, and wonder if the Yeerks knew what they were getting into. This is explicitly why they are using a shadow invasion in the first place, which proves totally justified once things get more open. This also edges into the Humans Are Soldiers variant. Neither side in the Yeerk-Andalite war seems to have a concept of "total war", and so the protagonists doing anything it takes to win (including targeting enemy population centers and helpless Yeerks with no hosts) completely blindsides them.
  • Stated almost flat-out by one of Visser One's hosts:
    Allison: "You think you know us. You know nothing. You’ve seen the world through the eyes of a defeated soldier and a junkie bimbo. You know nothing. We’ll defeat you, Edriss."
  • Not to mention:
    Edriss/ Visser One: Ignorant fool! Humans have fought thousands of wars. Thousands! We as a race have fought only a mere handful. They run straight into the bullets, Visser Three, again and again. Did you know that? They attack against insane odds. They defend what cannot be defended. Outnumbered, outgunned, surrounded, hopeless, they will still fight, fight, fight until they are each and every one dead...You see Visser, a human forced to fight can be brave to the point of madness...
• Central Control stories by Andre Norton: Where upon making first contact with the rest of the galaxy, humanity was deemed too savage to be allowed free run of the place. Instead, humans are only allowed to go off world as sort of Space Hessians.
• Death or Glory by Vladimir Vasilyev: Humans are one of the weakest, technologically-backward races in the galaxy. While we have finally figured out FTL travel, it's extremely slow and costly. The major worlds (including Earth) are suffering from pollution and overpopulation. The outer colonies are, basically, Wild West In Space. The alien races, for the most part, avoid humanity, as they consider intelligent primates to be an evolutionary mistake (our bodies are too complex for our own good), and only pay a visit when they want to demand some resource or other. A chance discovery results in humans getting their hands on an extremely-powerful warship, capable of obliterating entire worlds and fleets. When the aliens arrive to the human colony, they send troops to capture all colonists... who promptly get their asses handed to them by the angry prospectors and the local garrison. Then the colonists capture the ship, blow up their colony, and leave. The aliens catch up to them and offer full membership in The Alliance, calling humanity a "latent" race. In books 3 and 4 of the series, a former slave race of one of the Alliance members rebels and proceeds to wipe the floor with most of the Alliance races with their massive armada, which somehow no one caught them building. Guess who's the only race to successfully resist the new empire? The other races are smart enough to realize this and try to work in tandem with humans.
  • In the third book, an enemy armada blockades a jungle world that contains a safari. The enemy sends in troops to capture any planetside humans. They get beaten by a bunch of tourists (admittedly, their guide is pretty good, and one of them is actually a spy on vacation).
• The Dresden Files has vanilla humans as the "nuclear option" of the supernatural society. Sure, individual humans are almost universally squishier than magical beings. But the last time they came together, they were a force to be reckoned with, and they were only armed with iron and fire and only had about a billion people scattered across the planet. Now? Now they have planes, trains, boats, guns, bombs, even nukes, and they number seven billion and growing.
  • At one point, Murphy offers to Harry to call in SWAT and National Guard forces to help them take care of "terrorists" (Fallen Angels). Harry is horrified, explaining that the Fallen would take this as a sign that the conflict had become no-holds-barred.
  • One of humans' few genuine advantages over the Fae is free will, including the ability to deny even the Fae Queens' raw determination manifest as physical restraints.
  • One example of this in action is the story of the Black Court Vampires. They used to be a major supernatural power, until the White Court arranged for the writing and publication of Dracula, which handed vanilla humanity extensive knowledge of the Black Court's abilities and weaknesses. Within a few decades most of them were wiped out.
  • But while all of that is pretty nifty, the best manifestation of this trope is in the White Council itself. The White Council, the strength of humanity to combat the terrors emerging from the night, exists as a bulwark, but is it against the Fae, Ghouls, or the Outsiders? Against the many strains of Vampires? Shape-shifting, fear-feeding predators, Fallen Angels, or literal demons from hell? No, none of those. The White Council of Wizards exists to keep wholly human wizards in check.
  • Battle Ground is a great demonstration of this. After Ethniu's attack leaves Chicago in pure chaos, with the police and emergency services stretched thin trying to deal with everything, the Fomor army attacks, slaughtering everyone they encounter. The Chicagoans, without any direction, modern devices or any idea of what the hell is going on, arm and rally themselves in impromptu militias that take the fight to the invaders— and start taking down so many of them that the Huntsmen of Annuvin decide to avoid them like the plague.
    • The Columbus Street Ambush (Chapter 25) exemplifies it: a thousand strong bloodthirsty Fomor horde charges across the road. Eight hundred men and women pop up with shotguns and bring down the entire horde in seconds.
• Empire from the Ashes: The Achuultani refer to the human chunk of the galaxy as the "Demon Sector" because their periodic genocidal waves always suffer huge losses there.
• The Forever War: During their first confrontation, the opposing Starfish Aliens don't even know what a one-on-one battle is about. The Taurans eventually learn about combat, but even they acknowledge that they would have eventually lost to humanity. Thankfully for them, humanity eventually cracked the Tauran language barrier and set up a ceasefire.
• Isaac Asimov was quite fond of this trope.
  • "The Gentle Vultures": All large-primates across the galaxy are competitive and aggressive, including humans. The aliens telling the story are small herbivorous primates, frightened of their more powerful cousins. They realize that if they detonate a nuclear warhead over an inhabited area, humanity will wage the war they've come to expect, but the thought of violence sickens them. It is assumed that humanity will invent Faster-Than-Light Travel and the galaxy will never be the same again.
  • "In a Good Cause—": This comes up as a side note in story, where one character notes that the alien enemy has a larger and unified empire, as opposed to the human empires, which are smaller and fragmented. Earthlings beat them because humans are so very much better at fighting, both in terms of skill and experience, and in terms of technology, having been practicing on and competing with each other for a long time. Earth diplomacy has in fact been devoted to maintaining this edge by blocking all attempts at forming The Federation while ensuring that no human power allied with the aliens.
  • "Nothing For Nothing": An ethical alien culture who believe so strongly in the concept of fairness that if they cannot make an equitable trade for something, even if it's an intangible concept, they just fly away and leave it behind. They visit late Stone Age Earth and discover "art", which they really, really want, but can't think of anything to trade for it that's of equal worth. One of them explains how a bow and arrow can be used for hunting and is astonished at how rapidly the humans take to the idea; this is considered to be a fair exchange, so the aliens happily leave with the concept of representative art. The one who taught them about the bow and arrow says something like "But they grasped it so quickly. I wouldn't be surprised if, in a million years, they come hunting us. And I shudder to think of that day." And all the other aliens laughed. The last line of the story is "Ten thousand years later, it didn't seem nearly so funny."
• The High Crusade: The medieval English quickly show a bunch of downtrodden alien slave races how a real warrior race beats the snot out of their oppressors. Bonus points for actually being plausible about the way the Rock Beats Laser. The best example? A trebuchet firing captured nuclear shells.
• Known Space setting by Larry Niven: The warrior Kzinti race goes to war with a peaceful humanity that has almost eliminated violence from society, with a technology level much higher than that of humanity. The Kzinti learn the hard way that humanity was only peaceful because humans are so good at war that they had to stop in order to survive long-term as a race. They also learn the hard way that just because humans don't think of something as a weapon doesn't mean it isn't a damn good one. The orbital solar laser stations in Mercury orbit were built for pushing light sails around the system, but turn out to be equally efficient at turning invading ships into molten slag.
• Liberty's Crusade, a StarCraft novel: When Mike Liberty says that "We humans are the most ornery cusses in the galaxy" and says that the only reason humans are "getting their clocks cleaned" by the Protoss and Zerg is because we can't get along with each other. Just about every description of the Terrans in the Starcraft manuals and the official websites makes sure to point out how the Terrans' inventiveness and survivalist spirit helped them stand their ground against both the Protoss and the Zerg.
• Mind Pool duology by Charles Sheffield: Humans are the only intelligent species that actually kills other intelligent beings. The other races consider intelligent life too sacred to harm, and are horrified nearly to the point of physical illness at the very thought of murder. This means that many of them fear humanity... but it also means that humanity is extremely useful on the occasions a hostile power makes itself known.
• Orphanage series by Robert Buettner: The threat of nuclear war and the decaying ecology of planet Earth has focused most technological advances toward the environment, while things like space travel and warfare have absolutely zero priority. So when alien slugs start firing bullets the size of skyscrapers at highly populated areas, we're left with little more than Vietnam-era weapons and modified 747's to invade a settlement on Ganymede held by millions upon millions of hive-minded highly-advanced aliens. If you really need to ask how that turns out, you need to pay more attention to some of the other examples on this page.
• In Out of the Dark practically every fight between the invading Shongairi and human insurgents is a Curb-Stomp Battle, the invaders only conquering Earth in the first place through orbital bombardment. Then when the Shongairi start developing a bioweapon, the vampires show up.
• Quest for Fire: Played very straight until we meet the Wahs (anatomically modern humans) who are a more peaceful egalitarian society like modern hunter-gatherers. All other human societies portrayed are warlike hordes.
• Starship Troopers: Has basically no purpose other than to invoke this trope, as often and as hard as possible. They are, at least, fair about it; it's made clear that the Bugs are also warriors. There are other races in the galaxy too, but at least as far as narrator Juan Rico is concerned, they don't matter. The galaxy belongs to the race strong enough to claim it.
• Technic History by Poul Anderson: "That race still bears the chromosomes of conquerors. There are still brave men in the Empire, devoted men, shrewd men... with the experience of a history longer than ours to guide them. If they see doom before them, they'll fight like demons." —Brechdan Ironrede of Merseia
• The Tripods: When The Masters come, they decide that humans have so much dakka and so much fondness for using it that the only way to conquer humans is mind manipulation. That is, a race capable of interstellar travel is afraid to fight humans face to face. However once that technique is used, Earth turns out to be fairly easily conquered... at first. Several generations later when the second wave of Masters arrives, they find every Tripod city destroyed and the humans ready and waiting.
• Troy Rising: Uses this trope, along with most of the other Humans Are Special subtropes. Not long after first contact, a top-flight alien AI spends several days crunching the numbers, and recommends that his builders - a huge, ancient, wide-spread empire of mostly-peaceful but technologically advanced traders - ally with humanity specifically for the purpose of a Type-2. The race's leaders are somewhat skeptical as to what a single, non-unified planet in the ass-end of the galaxy could possibly do, but in the end, trust in the judgment, and hands humanity some basic tools that they can use to pull a Type-1 on the Horvath that are already treating them as slaves. Sure enough, humanity soon bursts onto the galactic scene in a cloud of 'Crazy Enough to Work' and 'There Is No Kill Like Overkill' utilization of both home-made tech and 'borrowed' Glatun technology. Even the highly-militarized Scary Dogmatic Aliens, the Rangor, are shocked at humanity's approach to warfare, with those few members of their research-groups who actually realize the threat of humanity being brushed off as doomsayers.
• Brutally deconstructed in Harry Turtledove's short story Vilcabamba. Humanity might have the will to resist the Krolp, but their enormous technological inferiority^note  even the aliens' APCs No-Sell hydrogen bombs! makes it impossible for humans to pose any threat to the occupation whatsoever. They can't even reverse-engineer Krolp weapons, since they're so far more advanced than Earth technology that it would be equivalent to the ancient Greeks trying to reverse-engineer a modern battle tank. As a result, the Krolp are allowed to exploit and plunder the human race to their hearts' content, with the occasional uprisings barely even being minor incidents to them.
• The War of the Worlds (1898): The humans prove their warrior attitude, artillery takes out one of the tripods, and the HMS Thunderchild another two (out of a total of probably about 30). They'd probably have taken out more as well, but Mother Nature beat them to it.
• The short story With Friends Like These... by Alan Dean Foster. It is told from the alien point of view; humanity was sealed under a forcefield a long time ago because we scared them that badly. When they release the humans in exchange for helping them against a bigger menace, one of the aliens has the sense to worry "What happens when we run out of enemies?". And the cherry on the cake is that the humans they encounter are vastly more advanced and powerful than they were before the exile.
• Worldwar series by Harry Turtledove: While this involves an Alien Invasion, the aliens ("the Race") have been at peace on three unified worlds for thousands of years and have assembled their conquest force based on ancient plans: the recruitment of soldiers is a one-off event known as a "Soldiers' Time". They are horrified by humanity's dozens of countries and factions and the fact that, even though they are technologically more backward, they're also far better at fighting. The fact that they invaded in 1942 also helped the Terrans. The Race spotted Earth during the crusades, and invaded 800 years later. To them, those centuries would have meant nothing. However, to humans it was a different story. Not only did they advance their technology as a whole, humans also changed tactics and adapted faster. Terran audacity also shocked the Race, such as an SS operative managing to steal a main battle tank right from under their noses and drive it into a German outpost so it could be delivered for study. (Their fleet commander was a little bit miffed at that.) One of the prevailing theories the Lizards came up with to explain Terrans' technological and social adaptability is that they're always beating the shit out of each other and always trying to find a bigger stick, while the Race are pretty peaceful and don't really have a reason to push their technology and society so quickly. In addition, things like poison gas, mutiny and torture are completely unknown to them because of this long-lasting peace.
• Xeelee Sequence by Stephen Baxter: Has this in spades, at least once the Interim Coalition of Governance takes over. The titular alien Xeelee outclass them in pretty much every sphere of technology, but the Fantastic Racism of mankind's "Third Expansion" doesn't let a little thing like that stand in the way of galactic conquest. A line in Exultant expresses humanity's fighting strategy; something like: "To the Xeelee, we were little more than rats— so that's what we became. Tenacious, relentless, swarming; fighting an interstellar war with teeth and nails."

Live-Action TV

• Doctor Who:
  • "Daleks in Manhattan"/"Evolution of the Daleks": Dalek Sec, upon merging with a human, outright states that humanity "has such a genius for war", and that they are the great survivors of the universe. This, by the way, is coming from a Dalek, a species that combines Proud Warrior Race Guy with Omnicidal Maniac, that exists exclusively to make war upon every other species in the universe, and Sec himself is a very high-ranking veteran of the Last Great Time War, the greatest and most terrible war in history, commander of a sect specifically chosen for their brilliance at "finding new ways of killing." And since humans establish a series of interplanetary empires and are one of three species that still live at the end of the universe, he had a point.
  • "The Sontaran Stratagem"/"The Poison Sky": The Sontarans are genetically engineered super soldiers, supposedly the finest in the galaxy (and about 4' 10") with highly advanced technology. Once UNIT get around the technology that was jamming their guns (since it affected the bullets, they changed the bullets), their speed, mobility and high rates of fire let them go through the Sontarans like a hot knife through melting butter. (It is amusing to note the Sontarans had been bragging about their armour beforehand.) Given their tendency to be a Red Shirt Army, it was... cathartic. Furthermore, the end of that episode illustrates the difference between the Doctor, a Martial Pacifist, and Luke Rattigan, a human genius who's just pulled a Heel–Face Turn. When the Doctor threatens to suicide bomb the Sontaran battleship if they don't leave Earth alone, the Sontarans basically dare him to, knowing he'll never do it. When Luke takes his place, they all stop as he gives them a Bond One-Liner.
    "Sontar-Ha!"
  • The Doctor himself pointed this out when multiple alien races were threatening Earth in the distant past:
    The Doctor: The greatest military machine in the history of the Universe.
    Amy: What is? The Daleks?
    The Doctor: No. No no no no no. The Romans.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Quark summed this up best in "The Siege of AR-558":
  "Let me tell you something about hew-mons, nephew. They're a wonderful, friendly people - as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts... deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers... put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time... and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people will become as nasty and violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon. You don't believe me? Look at those faces, look at their eyes..."
  • To which Nog eventually replied, "I feel sorry for the Jem'Hadar." Despite being severely depleted and overtaxed, they weathered an attack from two columns of the Dominion's genetically-engineered Super Soldiers and held.
  • Quark's quote above basically describes the kind of hardship that will drive humans to fight for their survival. Then, shortly afterwards, Quark shows that he's similar when he shoots a Jem'Hadar in order to defend a helpless Nog. He looks absolutely shocked when he realizes that, when it comes down to him and his family versus the enemy, he will kill without hesitation, just like the humans are doing.
  • Though Klingons like to present themselves as superior to humans, they have always respected our battle prowess. We were one of the few species to give the entire Empire serious trouble - enough that they eventually found it better to ally with us. Later on, when the Klingon chancellor is murdered through dishonorable methods, the Klingon Empire puts the matter of their Rite of Succession in the hands of none other than Jean-Luc Picard, specifically because of humanity's honor and courage in battle.
    • Klingons only originally allied with the Federation out of desperation; their homeworld was dying (a major plot component of Star Trek VI). However, as shown in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Yesterday's Enterprise", the fact that a Federation starship flew headfirst into battle, outnumbered by Romulans, to save a Klingon outpost strengthened this alliance, and, as the events of the alternate timeline indicate, indeed saved it.
  • Finally revealed in Star Trek: Enterprise as the reason Vulcans attempted to slow human development. Late in Season 4 the Vulcan ambassador explained to Admiral Forrest that Vulcans were scared of Humans. Their civilization collapsed and it took them a thousand years to rebuild it. Humans suffered the same, and we got back on our feet in less than a hundred, inventing warp drive in the process. He also stated that for all that we might be compared to Andorians or Tellarites, we remind them most of themselves, before they started repressing emotion. Alas, it came too late to save the series. PLUS: Humans united the various galactic races TWICE: once in "our" reality as the Federation, to combat the Romulans, and again in the "Mirror Universe" as the Terran Empire, who ended up uniting everyone else against them.
    • The "mirror universe" two-parter episode of Enterprise suggests that mirror universe humanity turns into an evil empire because of this trope. The opening titles of this episode are changed to showcase humanity's history of war and destruction, and show us taking that heritage to the stars, in contrast to Trek's usual emphasis on humanity's history of exploration and curiosity.
  • In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the Dominion boast of having an empire which has persisted for 2,000 years and never met defeat... until they decided to make an enemy of humanity. For comparison, a Romulan/Cardassian attempt to eliminate the Dominion's Founders cost them an entire fleet, and pretty much wiped out those races' intelligence services. Humanity's covert Section 31 branch infected them with a deadly epidemic on the first try, and would have wiped them out entirely if the cure hadn't been bartered for a surrender. The only time the Time Abyss Shape Shifting Founders were ever truly threatened with extinction in their entire history was at the hands of humans. As for the Dominion themselves, they had superior technology to start, which made things tough for the Federation, and superior logistics kept them in the fight a whole lot longer. Even so, once the Federation decides they aren't playing with kid's gloves anymore, the Dominion found they had poked the wrong hornet's nest.
  • One last interesting bit of information: There are only 2 races in the galaxy that are known to have repelled a direct invasion by the Borg: Species 8472 and humans. The only time those two engaged in combat against each other, humanity Curb Stomped 8472 (using modified Borg weapons ironically enough). The Borg also recognize humans as the greater threat of the two, and humans are the only race that the Borg have ever resorted to underhanded tactics to try and conquer (going back in time and trying to Ret-Gone humanity in Star Trek: First Contact, and considering the use of nanotechnology to covertly assimilate Earth in Star Trek: Voyager).
• Prior to the events of Babylon 5, Earth was on the losing end of a genocidal war against the Minbari. However, Londo recalls years later, humanity refused to roll over and made the Minbari fight hard for every little gain, even though they knew the bloody end was inevitable.
  Londo: The humans, I think, knew they were doomed, but where another race would surrender to despair, the humans fought back with even greater strength. They made the Minbari fight for every inch of space. In my life, I have never seen anything like it. They would weep, they would pray, they would say good-bye to their loved ones, and then throw themselves, without fear or hesitation, at the very face of death itself, never surrendering. No one who saw them fighting against the inevitable could help but be moved to tears by their courage, their stubborn nobility. When they ran out of ships, they used guns. When they ran out of guns, they used knives, and sticks, and bare hands. They were magnificent. I only hope that when it is my time, I may die with half as much dignity as I saw in their eyes at the end. They did this for two years! They never ran out of courage. But in the end, they ran out of time.

Pinball

• Attack from Mars takes this trope to its logical conclusion: when the Martians attempt an invasion of Earth, they rely entirely on their superior technology and firepower, such that they spend the majority of the takeover messing around, convinced humans don't stand a chance. Not only do the Earthlings defeat the Martians with minimal effort due to rapid mobilization and using nuclear weaponry as a first resort, once the invaders are wiped out, the Earthlings appropriate the Martian mothership, take over Mars, and eventually, conquer the entire universe.

Tabletop Games

• Mekton: Back story for the Invasion Terra setting has this with a few traces of type 2. The Human Alien invaders have all the edges: longer-established technology, the ability to clone armies in a month, FTL... But we have a few of our own, stuff like "Human Adaptability", "Stolen Mecha Technology", "Guerrilla Warfare" and a few of their friends. At one point, they're caught flat-footed by humanity switching over to AM radio because they can tap into our FM signals. The "Type 2" part also shows up: their obsession with honour means that they don't know what to make of guerilla warfare. Towards the end of the storyline, they have not only been thrown off Earth, but have to divert entire fleets to hunt Terran raiding ships. The take-home message? Do not fuck with planet Earth.
• Literally with the Warrior type in the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game; which consists almost entirely of humans, and they are capable of taking on all kinds of freaky creatures.
• In the Duel Masters/Kaijudo mythos, Humans are part of the Fire civilization. Due to the harsh conditions and myriad destructive creatures (Dragons are part of this civilization, too), Humans are basically trained to use Powered Armor from childhood. It's the only way to hold their own in this universe.
• Rocket Age's Earthlings are commonly seen as warmongering, aggressive and heavily armed by the rest of the solar system and that's certainly not inaccurate, as every major nation has soldiers spread across various planets and moons. Even the Europans, who like to state that they rule the solar system, are beginning to show concern.

Video Games

• In Remnant: From the Ashes and Remnant II, human stubbornness, skill at war, and will to survive are the major reason why there are any humans left on Earth after the Root invaded and slaughtered 97% of the population. The last remnants of humanity clawed their way Back from the Brink after Earth was subjected to Hostile Terraforming, journeyed through multiple worlds of ferocious and violent monsters, and were able to destroy the main core of the Root presence on Earth.
  • Of particular note is that neither game's protagonist is remotely special. They are normal humans who go up against highly-advanced alien robots, gigantic alien monsters, various forms of supernatural beings, and Fae warriors and come out on top through grit, skill with arms, and clever use of available resources, such as taking available scrap and parts of alien machines and weapons and converting them into weapon modifications to turn on the enemy.
  • Also, most human weapons, which are largely scrap guns put together from old machinery and spare parts, are actually competitive with the majority of nonhuman armaments. The more exotic weapons tend to be taken from nonhuman technology or body parts and repurposed into human-style weapons, such as the Spitfire which is a combination of a Root Dragon's heart and a submachinegun, or Nightfall, which is an assault rifle merged with the silks taken from the corpse of a Fae nightmare goddess.
• Played very straight in the Borderlands series. Almost everyone is a Blood Knight to some degree, mainly because Pandora and Elpis are so dangerous, and there's no real government other than the various mega corps. Even the nicer characters like Moxxi or Janey Springs wont think twice about sending you to kill boatloads of bandits or Hyperion soldiers (who, to be fair, are almost Always Chaotic Evil.)
• Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars has many examples of this. Once the Scrin start their mining operations on the supposedly barren-of-intelligent-life planet, they discover to their horror that the signal to start the harvesting was actually fake and humans were still alive, though still divided between the GDI and The Brotherhood of Nod. With GDI being coldly determined to reverse the contamination the Scrin started and Nod eager to steal the aliens' technology and use it to access other worlds. Both factions are fighting the Scrin while humans keep fighting a world war between each other for the complete dominion of the planet and eradication of all the other factions.
  • A quote from the Scrin Intel Database: "... Indigenous population warlike to the extreme - once Threshold construction is complete and gateway is open, entire indigenous population must be cleansed from the surface of the planet."^note Translation: These ape-things are insane! We need to enact a Final Solution or their planet won't be worth the trouble!
• DEADLOCK has the Skirineen, a race of merchants without a conscience. When the now-peaceful and seemingly harmless humans refuse to trade with them on their terms, the Skirineen try to force their hand and blow up the Moon to show they mean business. Instead, humanity reveals its violent roots, rearms and curbstomps the Skirineen.
• Halo: The humans' tendency toward courage, tenacity, and innovation is the only thing keeping them from falling to the technologically superior Covenant. It is also one of the main things that endear the Sangheili ^note Elites of the Covenant to humanity, allowing for a later alliance.
  • After the war, the Sangheili initially have an extremely difficult time getting their society to undertake jobs normally reserved for other species in the Covenant, since their whole populace is indoctrinated with the belief they are worthless if they are not warriors. One makes a comment in Halo: Glasslands that humans do not excel at anything, but are able to get by because they are simply good enough at everything. Basically, it's not just Humans Are Warriors, but Humans Can Support Their Warriors.
  • As first revealed in The Forerunner Saga, there was a prehistoric human empire (well, hominid empire; it actually included several Human Subspecies and sentient variants of a few other ape varieties) that managed to stand up to the Forerunners, which was the dominant power in the galaxy at the time. After taking over large parts of the Orion Arm, they then fought a war with the Flood and managed to drive them back at the cost of being severely weakened. It was only then that the Forerunners were able to defeat humanity after many centuries of war.
• Mass Effect: Humanity showed a surprising amount of combat prowess against the turian fleet they encountered in the First Contact War, which caused the mobilization of the entire turian military. Humanity has repeatedly shown an aggressive and warlike attitude, rapidly gaining a reputation as tenacious fighters. In addition humanity frequently establishes colonies in various hostile reaches of space. They have to frequently fight to protect their territory and colonies from various raiders and threats.
  • According to the back-story, Humans also use entirely different military tactics. Humans pretty much introduced the concept of a carrier to the galaxy (mostly to get around treaties regarding how many Dreadnoughts they could have). Also, most of the other species station a few ships at each inhabited planet to try and protect them all. The back-story says humanity leaves a large number of ships at a central place a few hours from all of the planets they control: an dedicated (i.e. non-raider) attack on a human colony will easily succeed for about four hours, at which point the attacking fleet will have to contend with a massive and overwhelming response force. On top of that, humans, with the aid of turian engineers, design a new type of frigate, blending stealth and firepower into one package, the first of its kind. The ship is both a warship and a covert operations ship, and is considered one of the most advanced ship designs in the galaxy. Fully upgraded, it is almost as combat effective as an entire fleet.
  • According to Javik, the Protheans intentionally influenced early asari civilisation, even leaving them a fully functional beacon, since they were intended to lead the Galaxy and thwart the next Reaper invasion. He is naturally very surprised that the Reapers have instead focused on humanity and that Commander Shepard, a human, is the one leading the charge in this cycle.
• Super Robot Wars: It is the main reason of multiple Alien Invasions in the Original Generation timeline. It is even lampshaded many times in the game.
• Sword of the Stars: In the backstory humans are healthily respected, if not exactly feared, by both the Tarka and the Hivers for their ability to grow into a galactic power at record speed. We did this after our only planet was nearly bombed to rubble by a rogue Hiver clan. We then expanded and colonized other worlds while at war with parts of both races (neither have an entirely unified government) who had a couple of millennia worth of head-start. Those rogue Hivers arrived over a pacifist Earth just in time to kill the first human starship ever, and proceeded to be driven out of the system by a species that had no space military, but a lot of ICBMs gathering dust.
• Urban Assault: The planet has been invaded by Mykonians and Sulgogar. One of the briefings states that, if the humans had banded together instead of splintering into different factions, they'd have won already. Among the human factions, special mention goes to the Taerkasten, for having the most resilient units in the game despite using technology from WWII.
• X-COM: Throughout the series, the only advantage the humans have over the bioengineered alien horrors and their advanced technology is a ferocious tenacity, skill at violence, and the ability to take the enemy's technology and figure it out quickly, then turn improved versions back against their enemies.
  • In XCOM: Enemy Unknown, this is a plot point. The Ethereals were actually looking for a species that possesses great intellect, psychic ability, and physical strength. The fact that humanity is able to hold its own, fight back, and turn the tide against the invasion confirms their belief that humans are "worthy". Of course, the only problem is humans are too good at combat, as they end up storming the Ethereals' Temple Ship, killing their leader, and halting the invasion in its tracks.
  • In the sequel, XCOM 2, the humans again prove this, even after they've been defeated and occupied in an Alternate Timeline. Of the four active resistance organizations, three are made up of humans and the fourth is human-alien hybrids who are all deadly warriors who managed to hold their own until the Commander is rescued and unites them. Once XCOM and the other resistance groups start working together, and expose ADVENT's true end goals and disrupt their communications network, humanity rises up and overthrows the occupying forces virtually overnight.
• The UFO: After Blank series is similar to X-COM, adding in that Humans Are Survivors, as they do the same thing as X-COM except in even smaller groups, with more skilled soldiers, in a post-apocalyptic setting where mankind has already been brutally depopulated by the aliens' initial strikes. It says something about how badass humans are in this setting that the sequel has to use the bad ending as canonical because the good ending results in humanity driving the aliens completely from Earth, rendering the sequel's story impossible.
• In FreeSpace, humanity and their former-rivals-turned-allies the Vasudans are portrayed as this, in the sense of their willingness and ability to keep fighting the Shivans. Within weeks of facing a complete Outside-Context Problem with vastly superior technology, the GTA and the Vasudans have managed to steal copies of their technology, adapted their sensors to track Shivan ships, and copied their shield systems. Despite the sheer numbers of the Shivan navies and their technological advantage, the GTA fights tooth-and-nail to slow them down, and ultimately end up losing simply due to enemy numbers and power. Even then, they are able to at least survive the invasion by abandoning the linking system and closing the hyperspace lane behind them.
• In the Crysis setting, humanity is relatively weak compared with the Ceph and their technology. At one point in the second game, Jacob Hargreave remarks that the Ceph were the ones who seeded life on Earth, and that they "don't like what they found growing in the fridge." That being said, humanity fights an enemy of such severe technological advantage with furious tenacity, and with the help of some reverse-engineered Ceph technology, have been able to blunt the first two attacks. In the third game, it is human willpower, skill, and individuality that allows Prophet to overcome the Alpha Ceph and then destroy the Ceph warship that is about to wipe out all life on Earth.
• The plucky Terrans from the StarCraft series deserve special mention; their main opponents are the Zerg and the Protoss. These races are gifted with the purity of essence and the purity of form respectively, while the Terrans have only bloody-minded stubbornness (i.e., "purity of cussedness") and slapdash technology to sustain them. Yet in the gameplay and the story, the Terrans are one of three major powers in the setting, mainly due to their willingness to try things the Zerg and Protoss don't even consider, and the enthusiastic love of firepower.
  • Downplayed, if you look deeper. In the ending of Brood Wars, it is clear that the only reason why the Terrans were not wiped off the sector is because the Queen of Blades is not interested in doing so. Come Heart of the Swarm, it was made painfully clear that if the Queen of Blades wants a human dead, he will die, whether he's a top general, or the Emperor himself. Of course, the Queen of Blades is a Terran herself, and her resourcefulness saves the Swarm on several occasions where their iconic Zerg Rush would fail.
  • Even then, Mengsk, with nothing but his cunning and a xelnaga MacGuffin, had gotten close to killing Kerrigan twice, and either attempt would have succeeded had it not been for Jim Raynor.
  • Speaking of said MacGuffin, it took those Puny Earthlings to figure out how to weaponize it. Protoss engineer Karax marveled at the human ingenuity in using the Keystone to fry any nearby Zerg. Notably, this option is not available to the Protoss when they have to do their own Hold the Line mission at the end of Legacy of the Void.
  • Likewise, the Overmind back in the first game was only defeated with the help of Raynor's Raiders. Zeratul makes this fact painfully clear when Artanis underestimates the capabilities of a UED patrol during Brood War.
  • Often lost amidst the detail of the rest of the Legacy of the Void campaign, as the focus is on Artanis and the Protoss forces, but after the Protoss recover the Xel'Naga Keystone from Amon's forces on Korhal, Raynor leads the Terran Dominion in a Great Offscreen War against the Amon-possessed Golden Armada, buying Artanis the time he needs to assemble the last of the free Protoss forces and complete Zeratul's prophecy. They are able to go toe-to-toe with the mightiest Protoss fleet ever assembled, the same fleet that on the final mission tears through the Spear of Adun (it was on the verge of destruction when the Keystone finally fired), and hold fast for weeks.
  • It is worth mention that at the end of Legacy of the Void, the being to ascend to the next generation of Xel'naga is... Kerrigan (who possibly took Jim Raynor with her to the ascension later). Kerrigan is a hybrid primal Zerg and Terrans. One hypothesis is that, since Terrans are a budding psionic race, exceptional individuals (such as Kerrigan) also qualify as purity of form like the Protoss.
  • In the Covert Ops mission pack, Alarak sends the entire Tal'Darim Death Fleet against the Dominion. While Artanis spends a good chunk of Legacy of the Void trying to avoid (and later ally with) the Tal'Darim due to their strength, the Dominion utterly curbstomps the Death Fleet despite being taken completely by surprise.
• Shin Super Robot Wars: Discussed between Laodecia and Lu Cain in a Space Route scenario. Laodecia says that Lu Cain's father Gresco has been proved right: the humans' fighting ability is beyond reckoning. What's more, the tougher the challenge, the more the humans stand up to it - in short, the aliens are just making the humans stronger.
• Toyed with in Universe at War. Earth is invaded by the Hierarchy, and the resulting war between them and the combined militaries of Earth is pretty one-sided, to say the least. That said, the Puny Earthlings make up for lack of technology and numbers with guerilla warfare and sheer tenacity. The Novus' surprise at the fact that the natives of Earth are still alive and kicking implies that humanity at least did better than the rest of the Hierarchy's victims.
• In Galactic Civilizations the Terran Alliance's special skill is "Super Diplomat," and when they debuted on the galactic stage nobody took humans very seriously - after all, they didn't even have a proper navy! The Drengin Empire, the mightiest race in the galaxy, went so far as to convince a minor power, the Xendar, to attack a remote human colony and start a proxy war to show just how pathetic the Earthlings were. Within a year the Terrans had mobilized, crushed the Xendar military, and were set to invade their enemy's homeworld, forcing the Drengin to hurriedly cover up their involvement by exterminating the last of the Xendar. Afterwards, the humans demobilized and went back to trading like nothing had happened. This, and an incident in which humans decided to defend another species the Drengin had been picking on for so long everyone else had lost interest, made the Drengin realize that mankind had spent thousands of years fighting itself and getting very good at war, and underneath the humans' velvet glove was an iron gauntlet. They promptly elevated the Terrans' threat level from "nonexistent" to "extreme.". Come ''Galciv III', Earth - and all other homeworlds - are overrun or blockaded by the Drengin and Yor after the Dread Lords devastated the galaxy. One Terran fleet seals itself away in a pocket universe with Precursor technology after setting up an impenetrable shield around Earth. Several years later, they come out and begin to stomp the Drengin fleets.
  Terran Admiral: You claim humanity causes the destruction of the galaxy. How can this be? Earth is surrounded by an alien armada. Our allies lie in ruins, their worlds ravaged. I don't see how we can be the great threat in the universe
  Thalan Ambassador: There is a crusade coming. A crusade led by humans. And with it, the end of all things.
• In The Elder Scrolls, the races of Men are very much the "warriors" of the setting compared to the races of Mer (Elves), with each race having strong martial traditions. To note:
  • The Nords are a Proud Warrior Race hailing from the frozen northern territory of Skyrim. It took an army of a mere 500 of their ancestors (the Atmorans) to bring down the entire Falmer (Snow Elf) civilization, nearly driving them to extinction. Culturally, they have numerous Blood Knight, Boisterous Bruiser, and Honor Before Reason tendencies while hoping to die in glorious battle so that they can enter the Warrior Heaven of Sovngarde. Modern Nords have a strong dislike for magic, as they associate it with the hated elves, leading to them being largely a group of Badass Normals. (They do make an exception for Healers, however.) However, in the past, they would become Empowered using the Thu'um, the Draconic Language of Magic which allows for small scale Reality Warping.
  • The Redguards (or Ra'gada in their old Yokudan language) are a dark-skinned race of athletic warriors with a particular cultural affinity for swordplay, though their fierce and independent spirits make them more suitable as free-ranging heroes and adventurers than rank-and-file soldiers. Their culture is based in medieval North Africa/Arabia with a distinct samurai element. They, like the Nords, Do Not Like Magic (with the sole exception of Destruction magic as doing more damage is always useful) but drove the l Left-Handed (Sinistral) Elves to extinction and successfully invaded Tamriel, where they settled in modern day Hammerfell, one of Tamriel's most inhospitable environments, all the same. They were capable of using a Fantastic Nuke, known as the "Pankratosword" technique, in which their most skilled warriors could "cut the atomos" with their blades. It was considered a Dangerous Forbidden Technique even then, and has seemingly been lost to history as a result. Most recently, the entire Redguard people repelled an invasion of the 4th Era Aldmeri Dominion on their own after the Empire abandoned them to their fate.
  • The Imperials of Cyrodiil are most famous for their skills as diplomats and leaders, but have a great "warrior" history all the same. While they lack the individual strength of the Nords and Redguards, they make up for it by having a more regimented and collective martial prowess, essentially the "soldier" to the Nord/Redguard "warrior" in the Soldier Versus Warrior debate. The Imperial Legions have managed to conquer most or all of mainland Tamriel three times.
  • The only "human" race which doesn't obviously qualify are the Bretons of High Rock, an Uneven Hybrid race created via an ancient eugenics experiment by breeding elves with their human slaves (modern Bretons are solidly human with a small bit of elven ancestry). The result is a Mage Species that is second only to the Altmer (High Elves) in terms of magical prowess, particularly as Magic Knights, but also has Anti-Magic traits in their blood that make them great Mage Killers. Though they lack some of the physical combatant qualities of their human cousins, they still have a strong chivalric tradition with various knightly orders. And then there's the Bretons of the Reach (an area of Skyrim that borders High Rock), that began their own insurrection in the 4th era known as the Forsworn, that largely have the run of the area aside from the city of Markarth itself.
• A small but very important part of the Purity philosophy in Civilization: Beyond Earth. Hence the combat bonus against alien creatures. The blurb for their Battlesuit special units suggest that the human body is already excellently suited to combat and transhuman restructuring is not necessary, needing only proper equipment to capitalise on it. Harmony and Supremacy civs will most assuredly be out in force to try to demonstrate that these claims are a load of hot air, though.
• Variant in Grey Goo, mankind decided they were too warlike to be trusted with running civilization so they delegated almost everything to machines to prevent war. Naturally, they end up threatened not only by warlike aliens but their own self-replicating exploration tools gone berserk.
• In the Space Empires series, humans are represented by the Terran Federation faction. The most notable trait about the Terrans in the eyes of other alien races is that they have spent much of their own history killing each other, honing it into something of an artform.
• In Golden Krone Hotel, the humans have a krone made from the steel of a smelted weapon, contrasting the vampires' eponymous golden krone. A random conversation mention that this illustrates each group's values.
• The Warcraft series plays this as Humanity's main hat. While broadly average, Humans are populous, have a strong military tradition, and are naturally resilient as a whole. Atleast partially explained by them being the descendants of the Vrykul, an ancient race designed as warriors of all stripes by the Titans.

Webcomics

• Vexxarr: Touched on in this strip. These sneaky bastards have regular exercises to keep their mobilisation potential high, you see. Though the Mahakalosians disagree with that classification; true Warrior cultures would either be extinct or monolithical, uncooperative with others and themselves and prone to eradicating enemies, which isn't Humanity's way, thus making humans an Explorer culture with slightly silly trust issues.

Western Animation

• Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers: Some of column A and some of column B were implied but mostly the latter, as the Andorians and Kiwi were actually pretty decent. The Andorians and Kiwi have fought off The Empire, led by the Queen of the Crowns. They "journeyed to Earth, seeking our help," but the Kiwi are more farmers than fighters (not that they can't if you push them), and the Andorians' hat is that of mathematicians and scientists unless you jail them. There is still the genocidal meglomaniac who is none too pleased to have defections from her Empire and two species who need an ally who's good in a fight. Hence the reason they send Zozo, Waldo, and a hyperdrive design that's miles ahead of anything the Queen has to essentially bribe Earth into an alliance. While Kirwin defends itself with a planetary defense shield, Earth is shown to be just plain armed to the teeth. It's also worth noting that while the series had a large cast, virtually all the military were humans, to put it mildly. The series takes place only a few short years after first contact, but as the episode "Armada" shows, the Queen has to spread her fleet dangerously thinly across her empire in order to build up a fleet capable of taking on humanity.

Examples of the "Useful" variation include:

Anime & Manga

• Guyver: humans were engineered as warriors by a race known as Uranus. Then they decided to see what would happen if they gave a human one of their standard-issue suits of Organic Technology Powered Armor — the result was the human becoming absurdly powerful and breaking free from their Mind Control. They eventually managed to kill him, but they were so terrified of it happening again that they aborted the experiment and fled the planet.

Comic Books

• Grease Monkey graphic novel: Humanity (along with uplifted gorillas) are recruited as warriors to face an alien horde.
• Cowboys & Aliens ends with a resistance group recruiting humanity to fight the alien invaders on other planets.

Fan Works

• In the Mass Effect fanfics that occur within the Uplifted series, the Quarians decide to uplift Humanity, in particular the Fascists for their military prowess and warlike nature, so they can use them to retake Rannoch. This goes somewhat better for them than it did for the Salarians.
• In the Star Wars fanfiction Earth, The Empire's-Greatest Asset, the galaxy tends to view the people of Earth as this.

Films — Live-Action

• The Prophecy: Provides a dark example where rogue archangel Gabriel attempts to steal the soul of an utterly psychotic army officer to aid him in his battle against the angels who have stayed loyal to God. As Satan sums it up:
  Gabriel has a plan. Humans, and how I love you talking monkeys for this, know more about war and treachery of the spirit than any angel. Gabriel is well aware of this, and has found a way to steal the blackest soul on Earth to fight for him.
• The Transformers Film Series has humans and the Autobots playing out this trope. Humans have technology just advanced enough to hurt the Transformers, numbers, and the fact that they're fighting on our home turf, and often for continued survival as a species. Of course, the Transformers are far from pacifists, having been locked in a civil war for millions of years (according to the Transformers Wiki, they consider our short lifespans to have the upside that our wars are also mercifully short).
• Galaxy Quest has aliens with no concept of fiction abducting actors from a Star Trek style TV series to help defeat the Galactic Conquerer that destroyed their planet.
• The Last Starfighter has an agent of The Federation leave space shooter arcade games on Earth and recruit the best player as a pilot. It's implied that he used Excalibur in the Stone to test people before.

Literature

• J. R. R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion could well be the Trope Maker. It is played oh so straight with Edain. Heck, the Men fight themselves all the way through the minions of Morgoth to reach Beleriand and the Elves. And without the Edain, the Noldor would have been exterminated for good. And Akalabeth exaggerates it. The dûnedain of Númenor vanquish Sauron himself. Heck, the mightiest angelic being in the whole Middle-Earth, Ar-Pharazôn the Golden, realizes he has finally bitten off too big a chunk when he attempts to conquer the realm of the Archangels, Valinor. Do said Archangels, seeing the invasion fleet, rally their elven troops to fight? No. They're so intimidated that they lay down their weapons and appeal to God. Who does easily vanquish the Númenorian Fleet, but only by changing the world from flat to round, thus removing Valinor from it.
  • It's generally a variation because humans are not better warriors than elves individually (mostly— Túrin is a notable example of a man "stronger than an elf"), but they do breed quicker which made them welcome allies to the elves who had their reserves depleted by centuries of war against Morgoth. Elves have the advantage of experience, superior senses and endurance, and usually magic. However if you skim through to the deaths of notable human warriors, they usually go out in face-meltingly awesome last stands and rearguard actions, or fighting guerrilla wars deep behind enemy lines. The Noldor were Morgoth's primary enemies, but it was humans who gave him the most headaches.
  • Sauron seems to have learned from this, because by the Third Age, his own host contains many Mannish forces, including the Corsairs of Umbar (themselves of Númenorian descent), the Haradrim, and the Easterlings of Rhûn, each of which consist of Sauron's Elite Mooks compared to the Orcish forces, Saruman, for his part, recruits Dunlendings to pillage Rohan.
• Animorphs: The Yeerks see humans as a powerful race because humans are surprisingly weak. However, despite the fact that Earth is a Death World to Terrans, humans have emerged as the dominant species. This would make for great shock troops and since humans reproduce in great numbers, the Yeerks couldn't resist.
• Berserker series by Fred Saberhagen: The Carmpan, being pacifists, were unable to confront the Berserker threat directly. Instead they found they had a weapon: Humans.
  • The introduction attributed to the Carmpan observer points out that all of the suffering and misery that humans have ever endured due to war has finally been justified, because the only thing that will preserve life anywhere is humans' meticulously refined ability to commit bloody mayhem.
  • Non-combat comedian manning a remote outpost by himself versus a Berserker who's somewhat malfunctioning and can't remember the definition of 'life'? No contest.
  • It should be mentioned that "human" in the setting is a generic term for anyone sapient enough to be considered people, excluding the Carmpan. Most of the individual stories actually do focus on Earth-descended Homo Sapiens, so the trope applies nonetheless.
• The Course of Empire and The Crucible of Empire. The Jao admit that the humans gave them the hardest fight of all the races they conquered (and they only conquered the humans by being willing to throw asteroids at Earth, while humans weren't willing to use nuclear weapons; a thing Jao don't admit). Because of the humans skill at arms, the Jao give them favored status in their empire.
• Ganymede series by James P. Hogan: The Giants evolved in an ecosystem completely devoid of predators and are instinctively pacifistic, to the point that they have no real concept of "war". They also recognize that humans' warrior abilities (and our understanding of violence and duplicity that comes from being warriors) is all that saved the Giants from being destroyed.
• The Damned Trilogy by Alan Dean Foster: A classic example, with a coalition of pacifistic aliens who have been fighting a centuries-long losing battle against a race of fanatical, mindwashing conquerors moved by a mysterious spiritual/religious principle. The problem is that every race is so civilized, few can even conceive of hurting another sentient, and even those who aren't quite that civilized and try to do whatever fighting is necessary aren't really any good at it. Then the coalition finds humans, a race ripe with contradictions but whose fighting abilities are beyond anything anyone, friend or enemy, has ever seen. And immune to the Amplitur mindwashing. In fact, humans can be so unpredictably and barbarically violent that the coalition would prefer to not use humanity at all, and only relents because if the enemy gets to them first the war is essentially over. A lot of curb-stomping ensues.
• The science fiction novel The Far Shore of Time, by Frederik Pohl features a race of aliens known as the Beloved Leaders who have enslaved countless races. Impressed by the abnormal capacity humans have demonstrated for killing one another, they resolve to mass conscript the entirety of humanity into their army after conquering the earth,though they are in this instance unsuccessful thanks to action by the protagonist.
• Humanx Commonwealth series by Alan Dean Foster: When the insectoid thranx first met humans, both were battling a third species: the incurably antagonistic AAnn. As the Enemy Mine relationship forced the two species closer together, psychological research unveiled some truths that each considered ugly about themselves. When stripped of their inhibitions, humans become berserkers; when thranx are treated likewise, they become cold and efficient calculators. The two psyches combined form a frighteningly efficient combat team, which is utilized to pilot small, two-person stingships against the AAnn to deadly effect.
• The novelization of The Last Starfighter by Alan Dean Foster: Used to explain why the Star League is so hard up for fighter pilots as to be recruiting them from pre-contact worlds. Most Starfighters are, by the League's standards, homicidal maniacs. Just hearing the battlecry "Victory or death!" made a visiting official physically ill.
  • It is also mentioned that the official giving the speech that ends with him starting the "Victory or death!" chant had to be almost out of his head on tranquilizers to go up and make use of such violent rhetoric, and even then he was only barely able to hold it together. Mind you, he was the Big Bad's father, and the shared genes made him the only politician capable of giving the speech at all.
  • This may seem kind of strange, since more than half of the pilots belong to a race that is explicitly stated to love fighting. But perhaps not. Fighting is one thing, but killing, murdering with deliberate intent, is quite another. And Starfighters have to go out and kill other sentient beings. In the case of a real war against a powerful enemy, a lot of other sentient beings. There is also the question of whether the race in question is simply prone to berserk rampages when provoked (not a useful trait in a soldier of any kind). The implication is that, despite knowing that this actually is an instance of being heroic, almost all citizens of the Star League are simply not capable of going out and coldly slaughtering people who are coming to coldly slaughter them.
  • As you may have figured out by now, Foster loves this trope.
• Pandora's Legions : A very successful, if slightly dim, race of Outer Space Imperialists conquer the Earth with considerable difficulty, coming to the conclusion that humans are actually smarter and better at fighting than themselves. They attempt to turn these Earthmen to their empire's benefit by having them invade other planets for them, but then are quickly and hopelessly subverted by the joys of human civilization; food fads, rock and roll, and planned obsolescence.
• Legacy of the Aldenata by John Ringo: The pacifist alien races aren't quite that ridiculously pacifistic, but they still wouldn't survive long without humans to fight their battles for them. (They're also being manipulated by fake-pacifist aliens on their own side for devious and greedy ends...) More specifically, each race has its own flavor of pacifism. The Indowy have no moral objection to violence, but as a race are too anxious to go into battle. The Himmitt evolved with chameleon-like body camouflage and thus are culturally biased to stealth over combat. The Darhel were genetically engineered to have violent desires, but also to become comatose if they ever indulge those desires.
• Ranks of Bronze by David Drake: Unscrupulous alien merchants are required by galactic law to use contemporary technology to wage war on primitives, so they keep a Roman legion on hand to wipe out any pesky upstarts with bladed weapons. The Romans self-identify as the Humans Are Soldiers variant: they are soldiers, not warriors, and that is how they can consistently win against opponents with roughly similar technology.
• The Excalibur Alternative by David Weber is loosely set in the same universe. Another alien picks up a medieval English army for use as muscle for his extortion racket after hearing about the effectiveness of a Roman legion being used by one of his competitors.
• Target by Janet Morris and David Drake features an alien diplomat from a pacifist civilization who arrives on a Lunar Base fleeing more violent aliens. After the humans defeat several of the alien soldiers, the pacifist alien decides to present humans as "their" warriors in order to negotiate a peace treaty.
• Confederation of Valor series by Tanya Huff: A federation of hyper-pacifist aliens comes under attack by another group of aliens. To counteract this they recruit less advanced and therefore more warlike aliens to fight for them in exchange for technology. This includes humans, of course. It is hinted, then confirmed that the attacking aliens are also being headed by pacifists.
• The Legion of the Damned series by William C. Dietz, has one politician trying to convince the human ambassador to make the humans glad to go to war... simply because humanity is one of the few races that is physically capable of it. Example? One of the presidents of the alien government can't go onto human planets without a special suit that keeps the local gravity from crushing him. Another alien races is a hundreds-of-square-kilometers raft of interconnected plankton with mental powers, but is very fragile. Humans- and a few other species, including the Naa and the Hudathans- are the only ones capable of going out to other worlds and contesting them by force of arms.
• Vladimir Vasilyev's Wolfish Nature duology, where humans evolved from wolves rather than apes, reveals that the wolves in the novels were actually taken from Earth 400 years ago by a vast alien empire in order to fight their enemies. Thanks to space travel (either due to Time Dilation or Human Popsicle state), a good number of them are still alive and have been released from their service. They return to Earth only to find that the rest of the dog-humans (It Makes Sense in Context) have become averse to killing thanks to the Bio-Correction that extracted the "wolf" gene from everyone. The wolves are disgusted with their brethren, as they realize that any alien power could waltz in and take the place with hardly a shot being fired.
  • They also find a disturbing lack of technology on Earth, since the dog-humans have turned to bio-engineering long ago, and have successfully developed bio-engineered alternatives to "dead" inventions. While "dead" tech is slowly coming forward in some areas (most notably, electronic computers are much better than biological ones), it's still a long way off. The wolves mention that no alien power would be interested in Earth tech, even bio-tech, as it's child's play compared to what they got.
• In Leave by Robert Reed, the heavily divided "Kuiper" nations use humans as soldiers for their almost ritualized Forever War. Stealth ships are used to scan for intelligent and obedient targets on Earth, who are then questioned and possibly "hired" as soldiers. The soldier is then encased in a suit of Powered Armor and buried into the ground for a month as they are indoctrinated. After they are shipped out to the Kuiper's rogue planet, they fight for around 20 years before being shipped back to Earth, carrying with them only a bag of loot - assorted bits of destroyed Kuiper technology, mementos, or valuable minerals.
• M.C.A. Hogarth's Pelted have very little experience with war. Having been created and sent out into the universe just a few centuries previous. So many of the Mildly Military Alliance Fleet's top ranked officers are human.
• The Kurtherian Gambit has this as its driving force; a race of aliens, unaccustomed to war, seeks to prepare Earth to fight, starting with the creation of the first vampire.
• Played with in Kris Longknife: Defender. The avian Alwans have a hunter tradition, but little interpersonal violence: disputes tend to be settled by dominance displays. However, Kris's people soon realize that the Alwan civilization they initially made contact with is only one of several on the planet, and one of the southern populations (plains-dwellers nicknamed "Ostriches"; the earlier-contacted ones are dubbed "Roosters") does have a warrior tradition and takes to human-style Space Navy training with aplomb. The unnamed Human Alien Planet Looters, meanwhile, simply haven't encountered significant space-capable opposition in hundreds or thousands of years, but their Beam Spam and significantly larger and more numerous ships makes defeating them difficult and costly despite significant human advantages in tactics and technology (and they learn from their defeats, too).
• The Quevvils from the Doctor Who novel Winner Takes All introduce a video game to Earth and kidnap the best players to be soldiers.
• The Occupation Saga: Humans are less physically imposing than female Shil'vati (7' tall on average) or most other aliens, but have much greater endurance (having evolved as persistence hunters as opposed to ambush predators) and slightly faster reaction times. They also don't know when to give up: they'll fight to the death where a Shil'vati would surrender, meaning that La Résistance is still giving the Shil'vati headaches six years into Vichy Earth. The Hegemonic Empire decides to make use of this and starts recruiting humans into its own armed forces, both for propaganda and practical reasons.
• Pegasus (2010): The pegasi were being hunted to extinction by the various monsters of Rhiandomeer until the humans arrived and made an alliance with the pegasi, then proceeded to drive the monsters back into the wild far from the pegasus homeland. This is stated to be not only due to humanity's strong hands and the weapons that those hands let us craft and wield, but also due to a certain drive that humans possess while pegasi do not.

Live-Action TV

• The Twilight Zone (1985): The episode "A Small Talent for War" plays with this. An alien comes down to Earth and says that they are very displeased with humanity's "small talent for war" and will destroy Earth in 24 hours. Humanity quickly signs a global peace accord and finds that the aliens wanted humanity to be much more aggressive. They then destroy the Earth.
• Doctor Who: In "The War Games", the War Lord, aided by the War Chief, is recruiting his warriors from conflicts in Earth's past because of humanity's talent for war.
• Earth: Final Conflict: The Taelons say they've come to Earth to be our friends, but actually want us to fight their wars for them.
• Farscape: In the backstory, Sebaceans, the Human Aliens who form the Peacekeeper Military, were originally humans taken from Earth thousands of years ago and genetically modified by a group of Precursors to be a race of soldiers who had no previous quarrel with any of the other dozens of well-armed alien races who wished to make the galaxy theirs. The Peacekeepers lived up to their name until unknown agents (possibly the Scarrans) sabotaged the armistice, causing the Precursors who controlled the Peacekeepers to disappear. With them gone, the Peacekeepers kept peace the only way they know how- with the threat of violence. What is notable about the Peacekeepers is the complexity of their characterization: individuals, especially higher-class officers and commanders, vary from pure evil to Well Intentioned Extremists, but the rank-and-file Peacekeepers, aside from their ingrained xenophobia, are an example of a proud soldier race, and in the miniseries, while working with the heroes to fight the galaxy-conquering Scarrans, actually come off as heroic. The Peacekeepers are actually a specific culture, albeit one that dominates the rest of their race; the vast majority of Sebaceans are just people.
• In Stargate SG-1 the Tau'ri's relationship with the Asgard is this. The Asgard ask for our help after the Replicators destroy most of their empire and their race. The Asgard's fatal mistake with the technology-assimilating Replicators was making more sophisticated and high-tech designs to counter them, which the Replicators simply absorbed and turned against the Asgard, rendering them largely immune to energy weapons. However, solid projectile weapons are so low-tech the Replicators had nothing to counter with. The Asgard then asked us to help them destroy the Replicators since we were "stupid enough" to defeat them. In turn, the Asgard become one of SG-1's most important alien allies, which, in turn, results in them giving us all their advanced technology when they were about to go extinct. Now Terrans are hands-down the most powerful race in the galaxy, despite being the smallest in terms of territory.

Tabletop Games

• Gurps: Time Travel sample campaign Eternity's Rangers : In which some mysterious Sufficiently Advanced Aliens acquire soldiers from all through history just before they were "supposed to" die and make a commando team to go throughout time on missions for unknown reasons.
• The main premise for Out of the Violent Planet, a modern-day setting for Reign. Every other sapient species in the galaxy is powerfully psychic, while humans are almost complete psychic blanks. This means that no alien has ever thought of so much as flinging a rock at someone's head (or home planet). Instead they use telepathic "ego breaks" to subjugate enemies, and natural claws or fangs (if they have them). Now they've met humans, who are so psi-blind their greatest assaults may just make us sneeze. Armed human mercenaries have become very deadly assets in the ongoing wars between alien empires. The game writer even lampshades it by pointing out that if the aliens' greatest vice is greed, then humanity's is wrath.

Video Games

• Half-Life 2: One of the things The Combine want with the human race for. Humans seem to be the only one of the races (at least out of those we've been introduced to) that manage to fight back against Combine control. It is worth noting that the Combine occupation force consists almost entirely of humans who haven't been completely assimilated yet and the real Combine military managed to crush the human race within seven hours. Then again, Gordon Freeman wasn't present.
• Nexus: The Jupiter Incident: The Vardrag become patrons of the Noah colony a lost human group. They trade technology and assistance for human war making skill since they lack the "stomach" for war themselves.
• Star Control games: According to the back-story of the games humanity becomes pacifist after a "small" thermonuclear war in 2015 scares us straight. A century later we are befriended by benevolent aliens caught in an interstellar war. They are delighted to learn that we still have a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons locked away in storage, apparently along with the skills to become competent and effective warriors once more. It is noted that Humanity makes a surprisingly useful contribution in the war against the evil Ur-Quan, considering our relative lack of technological advancement. It still doesn't end well. Afterwards, the Ur-Quan feel the need to not only encase Earth in an impenetrable shield, but also station an entire fleet on the Moon just to make sure we don't try anything "sneaky." The Yehat, a species of honor based warriors, who look like pterosaurs and have a feudal, clan-based society, actually respect the humans a lot because we have one important thing in common. Both of our civilizations developed many of their major technologies through conflict. So for them, we are a warrior race too.
  • There were humans on both sides of the Hierarchy-Alliance War: the Androsynth were, after all, humans who happened to be the product of cloning. They Turned Against Their Masters and left for the stars, where they met the Hierarchy, who offered them a chance at some payback. And the Androsynth Guardian was definitely one of the tougher Hierarchy ships.
• Super Robot Wars: The Balmarians want to conquer Earth to turn the population into soldiers.
• Tabula Rasa gives this as the reason why good aliens gave humans wormhole technology. The humans in turn help them fight their long term enemies who also happen to invade Earth.
• In the backstory of the X-Universe, the pacifist Boron were under attack from the warlike Split and losing badly. The Argon, a civilization descended from a human warfleet that trapped itself in deep space to lure insane terraforming drones away from Earth, took pity on the Boron (partly because they themselves needed an ally against the Paranid) and gave the Split a Superweapon Surprise. On seeing the resident bullies smashed out of space the rest of the universe gained new respect for the Argon, especially the Boron who became fast friends.
  • The Argon also fairly demonstrate the Humans Are Soldiers subtype. In both this incident and the subsequent Boron Campaign, the Argon prove themselves better at warfare than the actual Proud Warrior Race Guys of the setting, likely because they don't see war as a quest for glory.
  • The Argon eventually get their asses handed to them by the original Terrans, proving that the only race capable of besting humans in the art of war are other humans. The Argon later fight back with reverse-engineered Xenon ships, escalating the conflict to the point where the jumpgate network shuts down to stop them from slaughtering each other in a interstellar pogrom - and to stop the spread of the now un-contained Xenon fleets.
• The main storyline of the Sin and Punishment series revolves around the war fought between Inner Space and Outer Space. Inner Space uses, as the game manual states, "warlike beings known as humans" in the fight against Outer Space. Neither side is presented as "good" explicitly; there has been multiple Earths for cultivating the humans, and each time humanity became peaceful, that iteration of Earth was destroyed, and a new Earth was made, making this a trope enforced by Inner Space.
• In Metroid, the Chozo were once a powerful race armed with fearsome weapons. They eventually became weary of warfare and embraced peace. Eventually they became such Perfect Pacifist People that they could no longer use their own weapons even for defending themselves. Fortunately for the rest of the galaxy, and unfortunately for the Space Pirates and other menaces, the Chozos' adopted child Samus Aran was a human who still had the instincts that made humanity the apex predator of Earth. A little bit of genetic engineering to make her compatible with Chozo technology (including her trademark powersuit) was all that was needed to make her the ultimate warrior.

Examples of the "Soldiers" variation include:

Anime & Manga

• Deconstructed in Attack on Titan. A human society under constant threat of extinction will naturally value its soldiers and military. In the world they live in, being in the military is well-regarded and the only way to advance socially; those that choose manufacturing or hard labor are considered cowardly. This leads to a lot of ordinary young men and women enlisting to save face and are hoping to make something of their lives (Jean enlisted because it's the only way for commoners to get into Wall Sina, Connie wants his village to think highly of him, etc.) even though a lot of them frankly have no place being on the battlefield. Even if they're physically capable of passing training, most lack the mental fortitude to actually fight in traumatic and stressful situations, leading to their quick deaths. Most of the Garrison and Military Police Brigade members freeze up and falter in combat, with only a few (mostly in the Survey Corps) being both brave and skilled enough to fight Titans on a regular basis. Possibly Reconstructed with Armin, who isn't very suited for soldiering but still remains valuable on the battlefield because of his intelligence.

Comic Books

• Tharg's Future Shocks: During a massive space battle between mankind and an alien race, a Cosmic Entity intervenes to see which race is worthy of survival, pitting the human general against the alien general. The human general wins after using his smarts to defeat the physically superior alien, but then the Cosmic Entity proceeds to wipe out the human fleet since they have proved themselves to be the most warlike of the two species and the universe would be better off without them.

Fan Works

• Downplayed in Cross Ange The Knight Of Hilda. When Rio tells Hilda about the true history of the world and how Embryo replaced humanity with his own version, he admits that human history is defined by chaos and conflict. However, that same innate chaos was what enabled Rio and the rest of the renegade Mana users to question and ultimately reject Embryo's control and side with the oppressed Norma subrace. Basically, humans may have an innate propensity to violence, but they also have the ability to choose why they fight and what they're fighting for.
• In Lord of Misrule's stories on Babylon 5, this is a recurring theme, and one of the Earth Alliance's greatest strengths when it goes to war.
  • In The Dilgar War, the Dilgar have overran most of the League of Non-Aligned Worlds when Earth Alliance joins the war and annihilates their main force thanks to discipline, courage and insane amounts of firepower, before mounting a counterinvasion. Incidentally, the Dilgar had overran the League because they too were soldiers: many of the League races had superior numbers, firepower and/or technology, but the Dilgar won thanks to discipline and superior tactical ability (the battles with the Brakiri, Hyach and Cascan main fleets, the League forces that could and should have stopped them, show this well: with the Brakiri the Dilgar took advantage of their fleet being controlled by rival Mega Corps and sowed enough mistrust they could pick them at different times, with the Hyach they timed the attack to coincide with most of the crews being on leave, and with the Cascans they destroyed their jump drive equipped carriers and left, letting the rest of the non-jump drive equipped fleet to die and avoiding a fighter attack that would have annihilated their fleet), and the only reason the Drazi were able to not get bottled on their homeworld was that they too had a general capable of taking a growing percentage of his warriors and make them into soldiers. Earth won mainly because the Dilgar were overstretched (especially after the Drazi nailed a large chunk of their merchant fleet) and their best veterans got caught with their pants down by EarthForce in that first battle.
  • In The Last Star this is the one reason Earth Alliance is still resisting the overwhelming might of the Minbari after two years: the Minbari Warrior caste, being rather confident of their superiority, have an unfortunate tendency to charge ahead and leave their supply lines relatively unprotected, resulting in the outgunned Human warships being able to slow them down and inflict losses instead of getting wiped out. It's also implied that the reason the Minbari didn't lose their whole fleet in some trap is that their current commander-in-chief Branmer (who got the job after his predecessor got nuked in a Human trap) realizes this, and, being a soldier himself, can keep his force disciplined enough to not get too many losses. And still, the Minbari are on the verge of economic collapse due the attacks on the shipping lines...
  • In A Fighting Chance (an Alternate Universe story where the Dilgar managed to stop the Earth Alliance counterattack long enough to sue for peace), the Dilgar supply Earth Alliance with sensors that can break through Minbari stealth. Result: after Branmer gets sacked for retreating from a losing battle (mainly due getting caught with his pants down by the Humans' newfound ability to hit his ships. He still gave an hell of a fight), his successor proceeds to get the last pre-war Warrior Caste fleet annihilated by charging in a prepared kill zone. Too bad that Branmer gets reinstated and, in the meantime, trained the crews of the Workers and Religious Castes into soldiers...

Literature

• In the Known Space series by Larry Niven, humanity was almost completely pacifist at first contact. As the blurb on the Man-Kzin Wars books says, "Man had decided to study war no more because they were very, very good at it". The Kzinti fight wars of conquest, Humans fight wars of extermination. The Kzinti could easily wipe out Earth's population early on with relativistic impactors, but they prize human slaves and want to take humanity's worlds for their own. Humans have no qualms about using such weapons on their own colonies under Kzinti occupation, however. The Kzinti are horrified to discover that even unarmed human vessels are a threat.
  • One example: The humans have a device that suppresses the electric charge on the proton. They use it as an excavation tool: you point it at something and squeeze the trigger, and the thing you're pointing it at tears itself into monatomic dust because of the unbalanced charges. The Wunderlanders built a large one and put it on a ship, along with a similar device to suppress the electric charge on the electron. They fired both beams together on a Kzin-held planet, resulting in what's described as "a solid bar of lightning ten miles long" that carved a trench a mile deep into the planet in a matter of moments. The ship's name was Treatymaker, with good reason, and the world itself is now human-held and known as "Canyon" after its most distinctive feature.
• In the Belisarius Series this trope is amply lampshaded — much is made about the fact that the titular hero's efficiency as a commander largely stems from Flavius Belisarius remaining more or less the humble Syrian peasant he was in his youth. He is successful exactly because he doesn't see war as a joy, as a religious calling or a path to personal gain — he sees it as a job to do.
• Features heavily in C. J. Cherryh's The Faded Sun trilogy. The mri are in every sense superior to humanity as warriors. It's simply biologically impossible for any human best a mri in lethally-armed combat, because their response times are entire tenths of seconds faster than ours. Culturally, too, the mri warrior tradition is incredibly fierce. Their alien psychology, however, just does not do organized mass combat, so humans (acting as unwilling pawns to another alien species) have nearly wiped them out.
• In The Stormlight Archive humans have faced countless Desolations in which the literal legions of hell have attempted to wipe them out. At least that's the official story: the truth is more complicated but actually also more dire than this makes it sound. Humans have held on through sheer discipline and technical advancement. One of the Fused compares seeing an entirely mundane force nearly defeat a highly magical one that caught them completely by surprise to a Greatshell, and calls it magnificent.
  • The Way of Kings (2010) provides an interesting exploration of the concept. Individual human armies are well trained and highly disciplined, but the war effort on the shattered plains has undergone complete strategic breakdown due to fighting over wealth and prestige. Their enemies, the Parshendi, lack human tactical discipline and training (and indeed had only been introduced to mass warfare as a concept when the conflict began) but have a solid strategic focus of survival that allows them to hang on.
• Discussed in The Traitor Son Cycle - Thorn notes that while the Wild is experienced in fighting, humans are experienced in warring. Ash dismisses this as hair-splitting, but Thorn is eventually proven right, as humans have far better logistics and strategy than Big Bad's forces, which are pretty much forced into battle because they're running out of supplies.
• Isaac Asimov's "The Author's Ordeal": In the Science Fiction outline described by this poem, humans are powerful warriors, especially when they're trying to rescue their women.

Live-Action TV

• Stargate SG-1: Many Goa'uld and Jaffa have learned that the Warriors of the Tau'ri epitomize the "Humans are Soldiers" variation of this trope. For all their advanced technology, the Goa'uld are the equivalent of a semi-competent Third World army: very capable when it comes to killing peasants and fighting each other, but ultimately hopeless against the modern, disciplined military organizations of Earth. Lampshaded in one episode where O'Neill compares human weapons to Jaffa weapons.

  O'Neill: "This... (holds up a Jaffa staff weapon) is a weapon of terror. It's made to intimidate the enemy. This... (holds up the P90) is a weapon of war. It's made to kill your enemy."

Tabletop Games

• Traveller: Of the major races the Aslan are famous as a Proud Warrior Race. Their males are reared from birth to fight. Despite that, even they are trumped by "humaniti". Almost all human ethnicities are at least competent at fighting, and those who fight after the fashion of humans from Planet Terra can build and destroy multi-thousand world empires. Humans fight in an organized fashion and fight to win whereas Aslan are not only politically divided but have a tendency toward ritualism which can put them at a disadvantage against humans.
• Warhammer 40,000: In the grim darkness of the far future, mankind is not the most numerous species in the galaxy, nor the most physically powerful, nor the most technologically advanced, but it has managed to hold out for 40,000 years thanks to a galactic war machine with more soldiers than it could ever hope to count, legions of super soldiers, a willingness to sacrifice billions of soldiers or even entire worlds to ensure humanity's survival, and of course faith in the God-Emperor of Mankind.
  • The Tau initially saw humans as a subversion of this, and considered Imperial soldiers to be badly-trained, poorly motivated, and ill-equipped. Then they found out those had been planetary defense troops, not the actual Imperial Guard. Then they learned that the Imperium they had been fighting was not the same size as the Tau Empire, but dwarfed theirs by several orders of magnitude - in Kill Team a Tau diplomat is stunned to learn that a small hive world with 10-15 billion inhabitants is seen as hilariously ubiquitous. Then the Tau got to experience a small Crusade, and met the Space Marines...
  • This is a recurring theme: the Imperium is the strongest faction in the setting, but humans themselves are pretty puny compared to the rest of the galaxy's inhabitants. Orks are stronger, tougher and even more numerous; Eldar are faster and all of them are latently psychic, with their exceptional psykers being orders of magnitude stronger than anything humanity can field; the Tau are more technologically advanced; Necrons just won't die no matter what ordnance you bury them under. The Imperium only survives through overwhelming numbers and a willingness to sacrifice anyone or anything to win. And even then, it is not always enough.
• Also was the case in the now defunct Warhammer. The Imperial State Army makes up for a lack of individual warrior prowess with an iron discipline and a great degree of tactical organisation, as well as a grim determination to defend their homes against all manner of horrifying adversity. That, and lots of righteous fury and blackpowder-based dakka.
• The BattleTech series thrives on this trope within the Inner Sphere, vis-a-vis the Clan invasions. Clanners are very much Honor Before Reason types, obsessed with honor duels and lording their genetically-enhanced Super-Soldier qualities in the face of the freeborn, and yet their invasion failed because Comstar exploited their honor dueling system to force the clans to abandon their conquest. Specifically, by issuing a batchall (short for "battle challenge") to the Clanners, Comstar literally invoked Sorting Algorithm of Evil, since according to their own rules, the Clan that bid the smallest number of forces was allowed to drop into combat first, and so on down the list. Only two clans avoided humiliation: Clan Jade Falcon and Clan Wolf, both of whom had battled the Inner Sphere before and were savvy enough to know they would "fight dirty". Clan Jade Falcon nearly lost anyway but kept their cool and managed to pull out, saving a draw, while Clan Wolf chose to go big (and last) and won their encounter convincingly.

Web Original

• The Legions of Hell in The Salvation War go to Earth, expecting an easy victory against the weak humans. Then the humans start overrunning Hell, and the demons start to call them the Lords of War. The demons consider obtaining glory and personal strength as the most important traits in battle, while the humans focus on what to do to win. The humans happily abuse the fact the demons are stuck with literal bronze age technology against horrifically effective modern weapons. The demons marched out of Hell with 666,000 troops. Less than 600 survive.
• The Templin Institute: Discussed. Marc notes that humanity's millennia-long history of warfare amongst its own species has, for better or worse, given us the tools and knowledge necessary to win battles and wars with ruthless efficiency, which is why fictional depictions of humans being incompetent at war is his fiction pet peeve. In one controversial video, he goes as far as to claim that fantasy humans are not like real life humans because they are not warlike and ruthless enough. The "martial spirit of mankind" is a strong Central Theme in Stellaris Invicta, especially Season One, where the human race conquers the galaxy and becomes its undisputed masters.

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