Groupie Brigade

What no Idol Singer wants to run into fresh out of the shower

In TV Land, whenever a famous musician or actor (or any kind of celebrity really) ventures out in public, there is good chance they will be descended upon by a horde of screaming fans who will pursue, attempting to get their autographs, rip their clothes off, etc. The celebrity will probably find themselves forced to tactics such as hiding in garbage bins or donning ridiculous disguises to escape the Groupie Brigade.

Very much Truth in Television, versions of this trope have probably existed as long as there have been celebrities. However, it reached its apex in the 1960s and 70s as result of Beatlemania. These days it is something of a Dead Horse Trope as most celebrities have security too tight to allow anything like this to happen, and fans must content themselves with flinging their underwear at their idols and other such shows of affection.

Compare Instant Fanclub. Can become an Angry Mob if someone expresses disdain for the focus of the group's adoration. See also: Celeb Crush which can result in Groupie Brigades.

Examples of Groupie Brigade include:

Anime and Manga

  • The members of Bad Luck in Gravitation tend to attract these.
  • In Ayashi no Ceres (manga version only), the main character, Aya, goes to see the band GeSANG (which consists of two Ambiguously Gay Bishounen ... one of whom is really a Sweet Polly Oliver) and is literally trampled by a horde of crazed fangirls.
  • Sakuraba in Eyeshield 21 is frequently chased around by hordes of fangirls, much to the delight of his agent who is making a mint off merchandising.
    • Hiruma Youichi once uses this to his advantage.

"Well, let's get rid of Sakuraba at least, using a simple missile."

  • Despite not being a really "famous" person," Yuki Sohma of Fruits Basket is regularly stalked by a vast brigade of obsessive fangirls.
  • Rukawa's fangirls in Slam Dunk.
  • In Skip Beat!, Kyoko has to get Ren by a groupie brigade.
  • Kamichama Karin Chu's Idol Singer Kuga Jin is often surrounded by hordes of fangirls. Karin has had to fight her way through the crowd to talk to him more than once.
  • Macross Frontier is the originator of the trope pic, Sheryl Nome has this group stalking her in High School. Yes she is in that room, yes that room is a shower, and yes that is a guy with a conspicuously angled camera.


Comic Books


Fan Works

  • One of these kicks off the action in the New Zork chapter of With Strings Attached, as the four turn a corner and unexpectedly come face to face with a line of kids waiting to win free “Beagles” tickets. (Keep in mind, it's 1954, so they're hardly expecting to be recognized.) Given their various means of escape, Ringo gets the worst of it by far, being thrown off a garage roof by a fan trying to get him down to his friends. And the Groupie Brigade stuff doesn't end there:
    • Although Ringo escapes those fans by accidentally teleporting to the Plaza Hotel, he gets trapped there because it's under siege by more fans.
    • Paul manages to lure the Groupie Brigade around the Plaza into swamping the “Hitler Youth” trying to detain him, because one of them is wearing a “Beagle” wig.
    • When John leads the harveys in their peaceful protest, they're surrounded by fans, but he's protected by layer upon layer of giant rabbits.


Film

  • Singin in The Rain. Poor Don is simply trying to get to a party, yet he must climb onto a streetcar in order to escape his fangirls, ruining his clothes in the process.
    • Gene Kelly sort of reprises this scene in the all-star comedy What a Way to Go! as a huge movie star who gets trampled to death by a stampede of crazed fans (with rogue elephant sound effects!)
  • A Hard Day's Night
    • Amusingly inverted in their next movie Help! - The Beatles pull up to their homes, and the only girls around are a couple of middle-aged housewives, one of whom needs to be coaxed to wave.
      • A similar scene occurs in Confessions of a Pop Performer, where Sid and Timmy find a rock band they want to promote, and at their first concert, have to bus in some middle aged women who have to be encouraged to scream and wave.
  • The Rutles. There's a rather surreal sequence at the start of the film, where they hop from limo to limo to escape the hordes of fans.
    • To be fair, there's a similar sequence in A Hard Day's Night.
  • At the beginning of Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Austin (a photographer) was being pursued by his Groupie Brigade, in a parody of A Hard Day's Night.
  • Bye Bye Birdie.
  • The movie Nickelodeon has silent movie stars being stripped naked by screaming fans ripping off their clothing for souvenirs.
  • Happens in That Thing You Do!.
  • ABBA: The Movie
  • The Disney animated |Hercules did this.
  • Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter
  • Joseph in Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is treated this way during the musical number "Stone the Crows", to the dismay of both him and the Pharaoh.
  • Prince Char in Ella Enchanted.
    • Worse still, the leader of all the Groupie Brigades was essentially a stalker who had spent her spare time spying on him and is convinced she'll marry him eventually.
  • Played dramatically in Judy Garland's A Star Is Born where the movie star main character can't attend her dead husband's funeral without being torn at by a groupie mob in attendance.
  • Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. While in Berlin to retrieve the Grail diary, Indy gets tangled up in a mob of Nazis who are members of Hitler's fan club.


Literature

  • Parodied, along with most other rock group tropes, in the Discworld novel Soul Music.
  • Herald Alberich takes advantage of one of these in Exile's Valor. When he realizes that the actor Norris is trailing him, he goes into a large inn and "happens" to mention the fact that Norris is outside to a roomful of young ladies ... then dives for cover as they charge outside and mob Norris.
  • In Monster Hunter Vendetta, Owen Pitt's brother (nicknamed Mosh) is a heavy metal guitarist of some renown, and is followed by a swarm of adoring orcs from the local village once he goes to the MHI compound.


Live Action TV

  • The Monkees
    • Although situations like these were more than plentiful in the real life mid-60’s era of Monkeemania, rarely is this trope actually seen, because, in their wacky TV show universe, the Monkees are not famous at all...in fact, they're Starving Artists.
    • One notable exception would be the documentary episode “The Monkees On Tour” and, to a much different extent, “The Monkees In Paris.”
  • Played with in Power Rangers Ninja Storm, in which the Big Bad casts a spell city-wide to cause this to happen, and the conveniently immune Rangers nearly get trampled to death by stampeding fans.
  • An early-series Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode has a spell go wrong (as they often do) and Xander is chased by hordes of love-sick fans. Only they want to tear his flesh off, not his clothes.
  • The Trope Namer is the Sylvester Stallone episode of The Muppet Show where Sly's fan club manages to get backstage and wreaks havoc. Kermit refers to them as as Sly's "groupie brigade".
  • The Lucas Brothers have these in Jonas.
  • As does Hannah Montana in her show, it's worth noting that they also play with it a bit at times, and one character was even smart enough to use her popularity as a way to escape by loudly yelling that she was there to a lobby-full of people who had just been to her concert.
  • In the live-action adaptation of Moyashimon, the UFO Club is depicted as this for Aoi Mutou.
  • Leverage: Eliot acquires one when posing as a country and western singer in "The Studio Job".
  • In The Dick Van Dyke Show episode "The Redcoats Are Coming," Rob tries to hide a pair of British rock-and-roll idols in his house to keep them from being discovered by the local teenagers. Somehow word gets out, and Rob's house winds up trashed by the groupie brigade.


Music

  • Allan Sherman's song "Pop Hates The Beatles" (to the tune of "Pop Goes the Weasel") has a funny take on this.

When the Beatles come on the stage, They scream and shriek and cheer them. Now I know why they're such a rage, It's impossible to hear them.

  • This actually still happens as a Truth in Television with some musicians. Specifically, Yoshiki Hayashi tends to have an almost Instant Fanclub variety pop up at any event he attends that is also being attended by Japanese rock fans.
  • There's a bit at the start of a song by The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band called "The Sound Of Music" talking about such an event.

Life's like that, isn't it. Only the other day I was walking down the West End and suddenly I was set upon by hordes of fans and admirers who wanted to...touch my clothes. So I took sanctuary in a nearby cinema, normally, of course, I wouldn't go in, but that day I saw something that really moved me. I'd like to share this wonderful experience with you, it was...the Sound of Music.


Video Games

  • This applies to wrestlers too, for example in the Glitz Pit in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.
  • Groupies are an actual enemy in Brutal Legend, working for the Hair Metal Militia. They're copies of the Razor Girls, and don't do a lot of screaming or, well, non-murderous Groupie behaviour.


Web Animation


Web Comics


Web Original


Western Animation

  • The Beatles animated series.
  • Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids
  • Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi did this.
  • Needless to say, the New Kids on the Block cartoon was all about this.
  • Shuriken School had Eizan and his other two friends disguised as a kid singing group doing a limousine drive-by disguised as them, where they barely made it to their destination.
  • I recall Frank Sinatra depicted this way in some old cartoons, with some fans actually fainting. This was Truth in Television.
    • See: Frank Tashlin's Swooner Crooner, Tex Avery's Little 'Tinker. A decade or so earlier, Bing Crosby was getting much the same treatment.
  • Semi - Lampshaded in Animaniacs, where the Warner Brothers and the Warner Sister Dot are in the middle of a parody of A Hard Day's Night, and sing "We are running from our fans".
  • On Rocko's Modern Life, Rocko gets an insane squealing brigade when he becomes famed underwear model Wedgie Boy.
    • Producer Ralph Bighead gets an army of psychotic fans that take pieces of his car, his clothes, and his scalp as souvenirs in "Wacky Delly."
  • In Metalocalypse, this (just like everything else in the series) is taken to ridiculous extremes... including the mass suicides among female fans after lead singer Nathan Explosion got a girlfriend. And then more female fans breaking out into open warfare upon hearing that he's single again.
    • Dethklok's fans are easy to rile, though; The Louvre was nearly destroyed by marauding fans after Murderface said he didn't like any of the art in it. Oh, and they resort to acts of terrorism with minimal provocation, defacing Mount Rushmore and committing mass murder to persuade Dethklok to perform songs from their album Dethwater live.
    • And, you know, Metalocalypse owes a lot to A Hard Day's Night and This Is Spinal Tap to begin with.
  • In one episode of Johnny Bravo, with Luke Perry IIRC.
  • One episode of Danny Phantom focused on this when Danny Phantom (by this point, a well known hero and celebrity) is on the run from screaming teenage fans; most of which come from his own school. He had to secretly turn human to get away from the crazed mob.
  • Homer acquires one of these (made up of elderly female opera fans!) in The Simpsons episode "Homer of Seville".
  • Checkmatey, the rapping chess master of X Middle School, has one in the Fillmore!! episode "Of Slain Kings on Checkered Fields".
  • Carl and (C2) acquire one in the "Spotlight on Carl" two-parter in Carl Squared.
  • In Avatar: The Last Airbender "The Warriors of Kyoshi", Aang acquires a groupie brigade of young girls on Kyoshi Island. Then he loses them when they get bored with his half-hearted attempts at showing off.
  • On My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, Fluttershy ends up getting one after becoming a fashion model in the episode "Green Isn't Your Color".
  • Generator Rex and Noah get hysterical screaming girls kissing them and tearing off their Letterman jackets when Rex joins Noah's school table tennis team.
  • Donald Duck acquires one in the Classic Disney Short Donald's Dilemma, after being hit on the head by a flowerpot and becoming a famous crooner.
  • Ben 10: Ultimate Alien: Ben has to call Gwen and Kevin to rescue him from one at the start of "Deep".


Real Life

  • Any rock band that has enjoyed significant mainstream popularity will have one of these. In particular, bands like Led Zeppelin, Def Leppard, Motley Crue, and Guns N' Roses are infamous for the debauchery they have enjoyed with their groupies backstage.
  • A Groupie Brigade almost killed Robert Pattinson after he tried to avoid them by running out into traffic and being hit by a car. (He was okay, but he still chewed out his fans)
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