Redshirt Army/Playing With

Basic Trope: A military force aligned with the protagonists is depicted as being easily defeated.

• Straight: Jack Starblade calls the Galactic Defense Force to help him fight the Xeno Empire. They are defeated in minutes.
• Exaggerated: A whole battalion of GDF soldiers are slaughtered by one enemy Mook.
• Justified: The GDF is poorly trained and fighting against an advanced civilization.
  • Alternatively, the GDF troops are Made of Plasticine so each single shots from enemy forces can easily decimates them
• Inverted: The GDF deploys and swiftly wipes out the enemy forces.
• Subverted: The GDF is such an effective military force that ninety percent of the time they do all of Jack's dirty work..
• Double Subverted: …Until the Xeno Royal Guards show up and put them in their place.
• Parodied: Not only do the GDF actually wear red shirts, but they are perfectly nonchalant about their impending demise. When it actually happens, it's comically stupid.
• Deconstructed: Due to it's inability to adapt to the Xeno's ruthless tactics, superior numbers and fanaticism, the GDF suffers such immense casualties that it ceases to exist as an army and human space is left undefended.
• Reconstructed: However, the surviving military personnel rally together and form an underground movement in occupied space that complicates the Xeno's plans. In the end, they help Jack save the day.
• Zig Zagged: The GDF is easily defeated in first encounter. However, they were just taken by surprise, and next battle they wipe out Xeno. Next battle,... and so on.
• Averted: Friendly military forces either do not exist or are shown to be competent.
• Enforced: "The Hero needs to take center stage, and the bad guys should be established as merciless and threatening".
• Lampshaded: "These guys are getting wiped out!! Who would even bother sending them anyway!?"
• Invoked: General Nova warns Jack that the GDF will take loses on a large scale in the next battle.
• Defied: "We're not going down without a fight!"
• Discussed: "Of course we get killed for wearing redshirts. We're the First Redshirt Regiment and they always send us where the worst fighting is. Are you badass enough to wear a red shirt?"
• Conversed: ???
• Played for Laughs: The soldier is issued a red uniform. He screams in despair.
• Played for Drama: At the end of the war discharged veterans protest their rulers incompetence and/or callousness by parading through the capital wearing red shirts.

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