Basic Trope: The heroes are saved from a Bolivian Army Ending by the arrival of one or several combat vehicles.
- Straight: After killing Emperor Evulz, the heroes - Victor, Jake, and Nikolai - are chased by Evulz's vengeful, pissed-off Mooks. However, just as the mooks corner them on the edge of a cliff, a Future Copter loaded with miniguns and rocket pods shows up behind them and lays waste to the enemies.
- Exaggerated: When Victor and his friends are cornered, an entire space armada shows up, with ships so huge and numerous that they literally blot out the sun.
- Downplayed:
- Victor and his friends escape Evulz's mooks via a bridge, and just as they cross it, a missile barrage from ground attack planes destroys the bridge, cutting off the pursuers.
- The gunship is unmanned, and it proceeds to hover in place so the heroes can pilot it to defeat the mooks.
- Justified:
- The heroes explicitly called for close air support several minutes before, and it was in fact promised.
- Mission Control has been watching the situation and can see that the heroes are in trouble, so they sent rescue.
- Inverted:
- The heroes are the ones rescuing a gunship, which was damaged and forcibly landed in an enemy-occupied zone.
- The gunship is the villain's rescue.
- Subverted:
- Victor and his friends are cornered. Victor says: "Don't worry... just give it a few more seconds..." After a few seconds, nothing happens.
- The gunship shows up, but the mooks shoot it down.
- Double Subverted:
- Then, after a few more seconds, Evulz's mooks are sent flying by a barrage of shots from a long-range artillery gunship.
- Shooting the gunship distracts the mooks, allowing Victor and his friends to take them out.
- The gunship is shot down, but the pilots crash themselves into the mooks.
- Parodied: When the time comes, the gunship sent to save the heroes emerges from Behind a Stick.
- Zig Zagged: The mooks have their own gunship support, only the heroes knew that and called for bigger support, only the mooks knew that the heroes knew and requested more support too, and because of this, what started as a bunch of footsoldiers chasing three commando operatives ends in a Mexican Standoff between two fleets of flying dreadnoughts.
- Averted: Victor and his friends don't let themselves get cornered, and so don't need a gunship to save them.
- Enforced:The producer: "Okay people, I got great news! First, our special effects budget was doubled! And second, we're now Backed by the Pentagon!"
The director: "That's fucking awesome! Let's do a Gunship Rescue scene - no, ten of them!" - Lampshaded: "Look! The gunships are here! I knew they'd show up!"
- Invoked: The Gunship Rescue was carefully arranged for, since the heroes fully expected Evulz's soldiers to come after them, and essentially lured them into a trap.
- Exploited: When the gunship shows up, Jake wastes no time in making a selfie with it.
- Defied: When the gunship flies in, Elite Mooks pull out surface-to-air missile launchers and shoot it down.
- Discussed:Jake: "Okay, if we can't escape the fortress in time - and I'm not saying we can't, I'm just asking hypothetically - who's gonna bail us out?"
Victor: "Don't worry, buddy. The United Federation has our backs on this one. Had to call in a few favours, but we'll get close air support if things go sour." - Conversed:Bob: "On these military sci-fi shows, Alice, nine times out of ten the heroes are saved by a divine intervention of superior firepower."
Alice: "Just like in real life then." - Implied: The story starts with Victor sitting in a bar and buying a drink of gratitude for the gunship pilot, thanking him for showing up just in time.
- Deconstructed: The gunship shows up alright, but it can't fire its heavy weapons on the enemy without hitting the heroes too.
- Reconstructed:
- However, the enemies don't know that, and surrender rather than try their luck against a heavily-armed engine of destruction.
- The heroes were clever enough to get some distance between themselves and the villains just as their air support came in.
- The heroes call "danger close" and have the gunship shoot at them anyway.
- Played For Laughs:Victor: Aw, fiddlesticks... we're all out of pizza and lemonade!
Nikolai: "We should call gunship support! Did all time when served in Spetsnaz and ran out of vodka." - Played For Drama: Victor and his friends are cornered on the edge of a cliff with no visible hope of escape, and he himself is badly wounded. He props himself up and addresses the mooks:Victor: Okay guys, you win. There's no possible way we could escape this situation, except perhaps for... *Slasher Smile* ...this little thing called "gunship support". *cue Surprise Vehicle*
- Played For Horror:
- The heroes dread the possibility of a gunship rescue as much as their enemies, because the odds are, the "gunship" is going to be their Mechanical Abomination ally who has an obsessive interest in shoring up the heroes' well-being, and whose explanations for their behaviour are so alien they don't actually clear anything up.
- Emperor Evulz's mooks are deeply aware of what vehicle mounted ordnance can do to soft targets and they let Victor and his group go. The gunship's pilot reduces the mooks to a pile of meat anyways. Victor is disturbed by seeing the gruesome aftermath of the rescue and how casually the pilot butchered the now nonthreatening mooks.
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