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Removing the Crucial Teammate - TV Tropes

  • ️Wed Nov 23 2022

The Team can have members of all abilities and all walks of life: some of those members may seem less useful than others and frustration with having to carry them can lead to an impulse to dump them to lighten the load; it'd also be due to the so-called "Hero" and/or other members of the group wants all the glory or are just being cheap, not wanting to pay the crucial member his rightful reward.

This trope is when that backfires. It might be that the expelled member had an overly specific or esoteric special ability that suddenly proves plot-critical: perhaps they were a Utility Party Member or Support Party Member who provided a critical non-combat role that the combatant members who had to guard them didn't respect until it was gone; or maybe they were The Heart of the team, and without them, The Team's dynamics are stuck in Dysfunction Junction, and questing just isn't as fun as before. Basically, by ousting the crucial member, the party have shot themselves in the foot.

One way this sometimes plays out is for the story to focus on what the expelled character does afterwards, rather than the struggles of their former teammates: as a protagonist, the expelled might find a worthy niche for themselves away from The Team and start having their own adventures. They may even find themselves commanding a premium price if their teammates come slinking back to ask them to re-join: Say It is likely to come into play, with the formerly removed teammate insisting that the others admit they need them.

Alternatively, everyone else does realize how important that reliable character was and the Crucial Character is merely now in a position where they can't help everyone else (accidentally or otherwise): in this scenario, The Team now have to learn how to fix their mess without the usual help leading to a lesson about overreliance and independence; the old character may still need to come in after this, after all, accepting help from an ally when you need it instead of limping along without it also a valuable lesson. If the former party had been especially cruel towards the crucial member before his ousting, they may be subject to their Karma Houdini Warranty expiring, and experience a Humiliation Conga.

While not primarily a East Asian trope, let alone Japanese, this has become something of a downright cliché in many fantasy Light Novel and manga series from the 2010s on, becoming a popular stock premise in which the protagonist for whatever (often petty) reason gets kicked out of the party they were adventuring with, only for it to just so happen that the protagonist's formerly useless/niche ability is not only powerful, but vast majority of the time is actually the strongest in the setting. The previous party is very rarely depicted as reasonable for the expulsion, even in cases where the hero really was being The Millstone: in fact, they'll frequently serve as the story's initial antagonists, sometimes (especially revenge fantasy stories) not even expelling the protagonist so much as trying to murder them for whatever reason; any Token Good Teammate among the party will almost invariably be both female and later join the protagonist's harem. Similarly, in the Isekai Genre, a stock premise is, upon being summoned to another world, the protagonist's ability is dismissed as useless or overly niche (either by the natives or their fellow Earthlings) and they are removed from the others — cue much of the above ensuing. And then there's stories that combine the two, but few so far that deconstruct and/or parody them, let alone play them for horror.

Compare Vetinari Job Security, where the character chooses to stop doing their job and everyone else discovers nobody can cover for them, Achilles in His Tent, where a team member leaves due to disrespect but returns in the nick of time, and It's a Wonderful Plot, in which the effects of the character's existence being removed from history is shown. Do not confuse this trope for This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman, which is a specific plot where events are contrived to make a character's hyper-specific powers crucial for saving the day and the character in question is not removed from the team at any point.

Also compare Hyper-Competent Sidekick, which these characters tend to be.

Contrast We Have Reserves and You Have Outlived Your Usefulness, for when the character can be easily killed and replaced. Also contrast with The Millstone and The Drag-Along. See also Present Absence and Deus Exit Machina. If the Crucial Teammate themselves decide to leave on their own but come back later, then it's Changed My Mind, Kid. See also Always Need What You Gave Up.

Has nothing to do with Straight for the Commander, Shoot the Medic First, Shoot the Mage First, or enemies attacking a Support Party Member; those cases are for when the enemy tries to retire the party's crucial teammate, though there can be overlap.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga 

  • The Banished Court Magician Aims to Become the Strongest focuses on Alec, who was fired from his job as Court Magician due to only using support magic, which the crown prince sees as useless; however, it's revealed Alec can use other magic, he just primarily uses support magic to protect the crown prince: as such, the prince's party soon finds out they're very weak without Alec's enhancement spells while Alec becomes a world class adventurer with some old friends of his.
  • The Beast Tamer Was Fired From His Childhood Friends S Rank Party has Lock, the titular Beast Tamer who has yet to tame any beasts in the time it's taken his party of friends to become S-Rank adventurers: because his combat ability was lacking, he did a bunch of party chores, of course, including scouting and guiding them away from monster nests to avoid unnecessary combat, but all that wasn't even the most crucial part. In this universe, Beast Tamers also have significant support magic meant for their familiars that Lock was using to buff his team; without that support magic, their combat strength is C-Rank at best.
  • Dungeon Friends Forever subverts and pokes fun at this trope in Chapter 25. While assisting Gob-san disguised as the monster Pan-kun, Van witness the B-class party Dog Fang kick out their supporter and rearguard Ekks for apparently being "weak" (to which Van lampshades it's a classic story setting which Ryuka likes a lot from her favorite novels and games, and after Van describes the usual outcome, Gob-san retorts "his friend" has strange tastes), but in reality they (especially his childhood friend Zairu) know Ekks is strong and think that they're holding him back, and after trying to tell him this straight with no success they resorted to banishing him for him to understand (to which Van points out is "a classic twist", much to the disbelief of Gob-kun). Since Van is a firm believer of the strength of bonds between childhood friends, he asks Gob-san to invoke the usual outcome by holding back the former party while he looks for Ekks in order to fix this, only for Ekks to have gone drunk with his newly realized power and planning to exact revenge on his former party and denouncing his friendship with Zairu, to which Van decides to give Ekks a beatdown in front of his former party in order to get them to rebuild their friendship; it works.
    • Other chapters lampshade and poke fun at this trope as well: such as chapter 3 where Van and Ryuka play a board game build over light novel concepts such as this, and when Van happily declares he's exiled from his party, Mino-san is in disbelief, Orc-kun explains this gives you a revenge buff, and Wulf-kun states that's horrible and he'd never play games like that; chapter 27 has Van, in light of Gob-san's views from chapter 25, point Ryuka's novel collection is geared towards stories like this, and Ryuka gets defensive and states that she finds seeing cocky heroes get pulverized absolutely refreshing.
  • Everyone's From Another World, Except Me!? has a subversion in Soya, who as a backstory was just kicked out of his party leaving the leader alone with two attractive girls: while Soya is a Support Party Member focusing on cursing his enemies and his old party falls onto hard times after kicking him out with each of them being kicked out of the party one after another (including their leader), they were not due to them getting into trouble without his skills. The actual reason they kicked Soya out was due to how unbearable his arrogant personality was and the reason why the original three were kicked out came due to the leader replacing one of the girls due to feeling left out due to being the only guy with another otherworlder replacing the other girl, and finally the original leader being kicked out after the otherworlder took leadership from him with him being replaced with a mascot.
  • "Heh heh heh....... He Is the Weakest of the Four Heavenly Kings." I Was Dismissed From My Job, but Somehow I Became the Master of a Hero and a Priestess has a twist in that the crucial teammate was a member of the Demon Lord's army instead of something more heroic: derided for being the weakest due to being level 1, Caspodia the Death Scorpion is kicked out rather unceremoniously. Turns out that his specialty is Death Magic and the reason he was level 1 was that he had spent all of his time resurrecting demon troops and never saw combat, and absolutely no one thought about the effects the sudden lack of Death Is Cheap would have on their troops before firing him; oh, and did we mention that he was the chief tactician of the group too, without whom the battle plans can't keep up?
  • The exploitative guild "Light of Glory" from The Strongest Solo Life in Another World of A Point Gifter gets hit with this hard: their crucial teammate was the titular [Point Gifter] Fildo, whose ability to amplify and distribute experience points was key on the guild's rise to the strongest in the nation as he has been keeping himself at level 1 to distribute experience to all of the other more combat-oriented members. However, when they decide that they no longer need Fildo's experience enhancement, it is revealed that the experience he distributed to everyone is in fact a loan that he can take back with compound interest: Fildo gains so much experience in one go from this that he becomes the strongest adventurer in the world while the entire guild that kicked him out loses all of the experience and levels gained through Fildo, with the leaders being reduced to the strength of rookie adventurers.
  • I Will Live Freely In Another World With Equipment Manufacturing Cheat features the tale of Touji Akino who is literally thrown out of the castle of King Deprui because he didn't have an obvious and flashy combat skill; it's only later that he learns Touji has the rare [Item Box] skill the "hero" party needs for their logistics: he doubles down on his mistake by sending his knights, in force, to capture Touji, prompting our protagonist to flee into another country, and the adventurer's guild, very, very happy with his exemplary work ethic and attitude, helps him.

Comic Books 

  • In Runaways, whenever Karolina (The Heart) or Chase (the Team Dad) leaves the team for an extended period, things go to shit. The second series saw Karolina leave to negotiate an end to an interstellar war caused by her parents, leaving them without a peacemaker when Gert, Nico, Chase, and Victor ended up at each other's throats over various conflicts, and then Chase quit the team out of anger over his girlfriend Gert's death, leaving the team without someone to guide them through their own grief. The end of the fourth series sees both of them pulled away from the team at the same time (Chase is kidnapped by a future version of Gert, while Karolina goes back into space to recharge her depleted powers) and naturally, the remaining team members all look hopelessly lost.
  • The Transformers Megaseries: In the ongoing that began with the soft reboot event The Transformers: All Hail Megatron, it's revealed that the Combaticons (Brawl, Vortex, Blast-Off, and Onslaught) have allied with North Korea sans Swindle. As Swindle is portrayed as a seedy, untrustworthy used salesman-type, the Combaticons are initially fine with him not being among them. However, it quickly becomes clear that without him to handle logistics and negotiation, they aren't getting as much out of their "alliance" as they could, a fact the other Combaticons testily point out to Onslaught.

Fan Works 

  • Miraculous Ladybug fanworks tend to play this two ways in "Salt Fics":
    • Version 1: Marinette's classmates prove to be Fair-Weather Friends who Easily Condemn their "everyday Ladybug" after she's Made Out to Be a Jerkass by Lila. They turn against her, and she often steps down as the class representative/president... only for everyone to realize too late that they were too accustomed to Taking Advantage of Generosity. Now that she's no longer working overtime to appease them, they find themselves struggling to get everything done without her, while Marinette realizes that their former dynamic was All Take and No Give.
    • Version 2: Luka, the only member of Kitty Section who isn't part of Marinette's class, frequently finds himself being kicked out of the band thanks to Lila convincing them that they'd do better without him. Luka goes on to become an In-Universe Breakup Breakout who finds greater success without them, while Kitty Section languishes in obscurity and/or falls apart completely.
    • Bridges Burned (Mama Always Told Me That I Should Play Nice. But She Never Met You) has this happen three times: Marinette's classmates break off their "friendships" with her in favor of Lila, only to learn too late that she actually has the kind of celebrity connections Lila has been lying about having. Nathaniel broke off his partnership with Marc at Lila's suggestion, only for Marc's artistic skills to earn him an internship at DC Comics. And finally, Kitty Section kicks Luka out on Lila's say-so, pissing Marinette off since this happens well after both of the above incidents and indicates her former "friends" haven't learned anything from their experiences.
    • In Fashion Upgrade, Miss Bustier forces Marinette to transfer to another class, blaming her for all of the recent tension. She comes to regret this after realizing that the former class rep was effectively her Hypercompetent Sidekick, as well as her most organized student and the best at planning projects. Without Marinette, Bustier simply doesn't know how to manage her students when they start getting unruly, relying upon others to step up and solve problems without their useless excuse for a teacher.
    • Happy Birthday, Miss Bustier has Marinette resign from her post after the wrongful expulsion incident, letting Lila take over as the new class president. She and her supporters also withdraw from helping with any fundraisers or other projects, something her former friends are more than happy to accept... until they find that none of them have any organizational or decorating skills of their own. Their bake sale turns into The Food Poisoning Incident, two of them manage to accidentally set another fundraiser on fire, and several people get injured at the school dance thanks to Lila getting the floors waxed at the wrong time.
    • Happens twice in How about... No! When most of the class breaks off their friendship with Marinette, they swiftly discover that she's no longer willing to make any more clothes, food or anything else for free. They then convince Ms. Bustier to ban her, Nathaniel and Chloé from their class trips, only for Adrien to continue standing with the others... and for the class to learn the hard way that most of their funding came from Marinette and Chloé, causing the quality of their trips to go from 'the envy of the school' to 'oh god, why are they on a farm?'
    • Marinette's Week Off has Marinette removed from her position as class president and replaced by Alya, who repeatedly insists they don't need her help with anything. Marinette happily takes her at her word and schedules her vacation during the busiest week of the school year, ensuring they can't rope her into helping no matter how much they want to. Turns out that Alya didn't even start making plans for most of the events until the start of that same week, and everything falls apart.
      • In the sequel, as Marinette becomes a star, her classmates (other than Chloé and Nathaniel) are left watching from the distance. Luka's also mentioned to have been kicked out of Kitty Section, only to get a great contract as an individual singer - even working in the same movie Marinette participates in during her week off.
    • The Miraculous Ladybug Salt-Shots Bitter Victory and "Being A Good Example Isn't So Easy, Is It?" explore the consequences of removing Marinette as the class president/representative. In the former, Lila is regarded as a Sucksessor for not being able to match what Marinette was capable of, much less surpass her like she'd promised; in the latter, Chloé makes clear that she simply won't allow Bustier to exploit and overwork her, and will have her father fire Bustier if she tries.
    • Oh Lady Luck (How I miss you so!) uses a Downplayed variant. Rather than presenting Marinette as a strictly vital component of her classmates' lives, the story emphasizes how much they took her kindness for granted when she only brings snacks for her friends after the majority disowned her. Adrien and Chloé also go out of their way to remind the rest of the class how wealthy they are and how many connections they have, talking loudly at school about all their big plans for each day.
    • In Raise Yourselves Up Were Done, Miss Bustier informs Marinette and Chloé that they won't be permitted to join the rest of the class on their annual school trip. It turns out that Bustier is so used to having Marinette handle all the organizing that she doesn't get any of the necessary paperwork filled out — forget the passports, she doesn't even submit the forms for any permission slips! Oh, and Chloé's father always made generous donations to ensure their trips were well-funded, but since his daughter won't be involved this year, he doesn't bother giving them any money at all.
    • Rather be Me (than with You): Without Marinette's support, her classmates find themselves falling apart and losing all of the things she'd previously helped them obtain, such as Juleka losing her confidence or Ivan and Mylène breaking up. Upon realizing how much they'd relied upon her, they try getting her back... without admitting fault, sabotaging their own efforts.
    • Tattered Remains of Broken Dreams (Yours, not Mine) neatly illustrates both variants listed at the top. Marinette's classmates tear up her school sketchbook; she reveals all of the projects inside were things she was doing for them which are now canceled. Luka is disappointed to learn his sister and the rest of Kitty Section were involved in the vandalism, and the band eventually breaks up, with Luka getting onto a demo album with Jagged Stone.
    • Yeah, I'm Done: Since Miss Bustier dumped tons of responsibilities onto Marinette's head and refuses to help Alya adjust or support her in any way once she takes over as the new Class President, all of Alya's efforts to fundraise and organize are doomed to failure.
  • Ranma Club: Kasumi gets sick of being treated as a house servant by her family and promptly decide to live with the Saotome family. As a result, the Tendo family now has no one to cook for them and their only other option is Akane.
  • The Omnitrix Hero: Due to Flash Sentry constantly running late for band practice and eventually missing a very important performance for a charity concert due to his new superhero responsibilities since getting the Omnitrix, his bandmates Ringo and Brawly kick him out. The next time the two of them show up, they mention they have not been doing so well. Not only are they still looking for a new guitarist to replace Flash, they can't use any of their old songs due to how Flash was the one who wrote them, meaning they need to start from scratch.
  • Where Was My Hero...?: During the Interquel, it's heavily implied that Miles was taken out of his team and sent to prison, which comes back to haunt Sonic later.

Film - Live-Action 

  • Hot Fuzz: Sergeant Nicholas Angel is London's best cop. Everybody knew this, and the rest of the cops were jealous that he was making them look bad and his superiors forcefully reassigns him to the quiet village of Sandford. By the end of the movie though, those same superiors find themselves asking him to come back because without Nicholas, the crime rates increase enough to make them look even worse. Unfortunately for them, by that point, he grew to like Sandford and combined with how badly they alienated him, he refuses to go back and chooses to stay.

Literature 

  • This happens to Red, aka Gideon Ragnason, in Banished from the Hero's Party on account of Ares: while Ares was right in that Gideon wouldn't have been able to keep up in actual battle for much longer, the former failed to realize how important Gideon was outside of battle, being both The Social Expert and the Living Emotional Crutch of Ruti (who is both The Hero and Gideon's little sister). The party quickly falls apart without Gideon there, as without his tactical guidance the party's battle strategy becomes Attack! Attack! Attack! no matter the situation, and Ares is terrible at trying to take over the non-combat jobs Gideon performed, such as negotiating with locals, because of his arrogance and inability to acknowledge he could be wrong. As for Ruti, she's locked into the journey to fight the Demon Lord because of her Blessing of the Hero, which compels her to proceed regardless of what she wants, but the instant she has a chance to reduce her Blessing's influence on her she grabs it with both hands and abandons her journey to find her brother.
  • Beast Tamer: Rein Shroud, the titular Beast Tamer is kicked out of the party of Nominal Hero Arios, because he was only able to form contracts with non-human creatures and being a weakling otherwise. This turns out to be a huge mistake by the party as they failed to realize that Rein, while unable to contribute to battles at the time, was capable of forming contracts with far more creatures than the average tamer (most tamers being limited to a single normal animal) thus making his abilities far more convenient for them when it came to Scouting, Combat Support, and Logistics, the last of which Rein played a huge part for Arios's party, and crippled them immensely. To add insult to injury, Rein also possessed knowledge of abilities which are unheard of to normal Beast Tamers: such as taming Insects, moving his consciousness into animals, and later the ability to briefly control Monsters and Demons, and once he learns that he can form contracts with members of the "Ultimate Species", which let him access passive abilities that are associated with those races, he quickly overcomes his "weakling" status, making the party even less justified in kicking him out. Despite being forced to ask for his help in retrieving a powerful magic item later on, neither Arios nor the rest of his team-mates ever admit they were wrong and still give into the impulse to insult him and his two beastgirl companions, which gets them a well-deserved ass-kicking as a result.
  • Betrayed By The Hero I Formed AMILF Party With His Mom quickly shows that Ceres basically did all the chores for the party including cooking and providing access to proper hygiene on the road. He also did all of the party's paperwork, including their expense reports which is how they get funding from the church as Heroes.
  • Chillin' in Another World with Level 2 Super Cheat Powers: When the Kingdom of Klyrode sees that Flio's stats are average at best, he is dismissed from consideration as a hero-candidate in favour of a different hero-candidate with far better starting stats: the King of Klyrode then sends him to die in a distant forest and Flio finds out about the Uriah Gambit when he discovers the enchantments on the bag given to him. Big mistake: Flio turns out to be a case of Magikarp Power, and upon levelling up to Level 2, his stats reach infinite while the seemingly better hero-candidate never manages to improve his stats and turns out to be a coward lacking any proper ability to lead troops in battle, meaning Flio turns out to be the better candidate all along. The First Princess later discovers this after removing her father and his appointed hero from power when an oracle referred to him as the true hero candidate, and knowing her kingdom alienated Flio, tries to make amends; even then, she realizes that Flio will never want to fight for humanity against demons after how her father alienated him and settles for making sure he doesn't outright join the demon side since if he does, the human races won't stand a chance and she's lucky to be able to even get that, seeing as Flio's wife is a demon.
  • Chillin' in My 30s After Getting Fired from the Demon King's Army: Dariel is fired from the Demon King's army by Bashbarza, due to his inability to use magic, which meant that he was unable to keep up with the other demons in combat; however, Dariel was also vital to the function of the army, helping manage orders between both the lower and higher ranked demons, ensuring that they had correct intel, amongst other roles. In his absence, cracks begin to appear, and Bashbarza is criticised heavily for firing such a vital asset on all fronts; it turns out that Bashbarza was entirely aware of how vital Dariel was, and jealous of him, particularly thinking that his father liked Dariel better than him.
  • The Creation Alchemist Enjoys Freedom exaggerates the trope due to Klingon Scientists Get No Respect: Thor Regus is banished from his home country by his father with explicit orders to die as a sacrifice to the demon territory because the culture favors combat strength above all else, and his father especially feels oppressed by his existence despite Thor having already broken ties with him years prior. This ends up being a mistake on two fronts:
    • Bargas commissioned the Alchemists' Guild to fix one of the Royal Family's holy swords, which Thor was in the middle of when he got exiled: when Bargas asks about how it's going (because the deadline for getting it back was closing in) it turns out that no one else can actually fix it. The butler orders it to make it look like it was fixed, the sword is returned to the Royal Family... and it breaks in the first time it's used, leading to the princess who owned the sword to be endangered; as a result, Bargas becomes a national target of scorn.
    • The demon territory turns out to be much nicer than expected, as the demons welcome the "sacrifices" as guests - and when they learn Thor's an alchemist, ther're all too happy to let him practice freely, as they revere Alchemy as a powerful skill due to remembering how they had their asses handed to them centuries ago, in a time when R&D guys like Thor were respected: Thor (who also gets an upgrade to his alchemical skill thanks to the interaction with the local magic) ends up kickstarting an industrial revolution that quickly leaves his former homeland in the dust.
  • Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Big Shot: In the final basketball game, Susan trades Greg to the other team, due to his terrible basketball skills; he then ends up making the winning shot and costing Susan's team the game.
  • Did You Know that a Playboy Can Change His Job to a Sage?: Three neighboring countries ally to fight the Demon King's army: this alliance is represented by a party consisting of the Heroes Laius, Aiza, Mills, and Dylan, the titular Jester turned Great Sage; however, the Party of Heroes is barely functional, and as the Only Sane Man, Dylan tries to keep the party's mood up with his jokes and tolerating their verbal abuse. Also, while he wasn't suited for combat, his brand of magic allowed him to buff his teammates during battle and he had better social skills, which allowed him to negotiate with innkeepers and merchants; one day, the party goes to the Demon Continent to fight the Demon King, only to be stopped by the Demon General: he was much stronger than the party anticipated and would have wiped them all out had Dylan not used a teleportation crystal to get them out of danger. None of his teammates were grateful and arbitrarily kicked him out, despite not having the authority to do so: Dylan had no complaints since it gave him the chance to upgrade his class to Great Sage and form a party with cute and busty girls who genuinely appreciate him. Interestingly, this is one of the stories where Laius, the Idiot Hero leading the party, learns from his mistake after falling into hard times: he realizes that Dylan's negotiation skills are vital to the party, and without them, Laius couldn't maintain travel funds, negotiate properly, or keep the remaining party together, causing Aiza and Mills to leave him; upon reuniting, Laius begs Dylan to return to the party, but the latter refuses and sends him away with some cash so Laius can make a fresh start. This gesture of kindness gives Laius positive Character Development and he becomes a better person as a result; the same can't be said for Aiza and Mills, who get into serious trouble with the law due to Aiza setting off her fire magic in a populated area: the King gives them one chance to redeem themselves by bringing Dylan back, as Dylan has valuable information about the demons, albeit Aiza is expected to receive capital punishment for killing citizens of a kingdom not her own.
  • An E Rank Apothecarist: Kal is the titular Apothecarist who is expelled from "Hero" Gran's party due to her not as combat-capable as the other members, being the only member still at the beginner adventurer rank of "E": with her absence, the "Hero" party are frequently surprised and ambushed by monsters, as they were reliant on her knowledge of the land and the local wildlife to complete their missions successfully.
  • Failure Frame: After his class is summoned to fight a demon lord, Mimori Touka's New Life in Another World Bonus turns out to be casting Status Infliction Attacks, which leads to him promptly getting banished to the bottom of a Mega Dungeon by the goddess who summoned them instead of joining the party of heroes, on the grounds that such spells are normally useless: it quickly turns out that his Status Infliction Attacks apparently don't allow saving throws, so not only does he escape the inescapable dungeon, but also swears revenge on the goddess.
  • A Former Child Soldier Who Uses a Magic Sword Wants to Live with an Older Sister of a Former Enemy Executive has this happening to both sides of the conflict:
    • The eponymous Child Soldier Seto gets expelled from the hero party due to everyone being disgusted by Seto's cruel, cold-hearted fighting style: while that by itself is somewhat relatable, their hasty decision quickly lands them in hot water, as Seto is not only the team's most powerful member, bar none, but also the only one with any apparent survival skills. As such, the party is not only getting quickly and easily overwhelmed by larger groups of enemies but also has trouble procuring food and other resources while out in the wild; eventually, the hero party dwindles and the "hero" ends up losing his mind.
    • The eponymous former enemy executive Satis is set up for execution for her repeated failures against the hero party: while this is to showcase how much of a Bad Boss the Demon King is, he also didn't think twice about killing the person who leads his armies. Not only did she manage to escape, but without her the demon armies were left unorganized: this not only made the demon armies unable to conquer human territories, but they were also defeated by the human armies, who didn't even need to use their strongest warriors to help them; this completely demoralizes the demon armies to the point of almost near uselessness, the only reason they are still a threat is because of Sebek and he isn't too willing to help the Demon King.
  • Happy Daily Life Of A Court Blacksmith: I Was Banished From a Black Workplace, but I Live a White Life While Being Loved by the Duke’s Daughter in a Neighboring Country: Fake is a young blacksmith who gets the work of his dreams in the Imperial Court; unfortunately, it turns out to be anything but, as Forge Master Morgan overworks him to exhaustion, belittles the work he does and threatens to blacklist him if he dares to quit, and the rest of the court's blacksmiths aren't any better. His Childhood Friend, the heiress of a foreign dukedom (who has been in love with him for years) offers to hire him under the guise of becoming her fiancé, which she can do because her family has traditionally married blacksmiths and she's being hounded by pushy suitors: seeing he has no future at the Court, Fake accepts. Soon, the Court blacksmiths are swamped: Fake was the only one doing all the important chores of weapon maintenance, including magic enchantments; however, rather than do the sensible thing and divide the work between themselves, the blacksmiths let the work pile up thinking that Fake will eventually come back crawling and allowing them to punish him by forcing him to do it: even weeks after he's left, they haven't realized their mistake.
    • Things get worse when the Imperial Knight Captain comes to the forge: he wants whoever redid the enchantments in his sword to do so again, because his personal blacksmith praised it as the best work he'd seen. Forge Master Morgan decides to do the enchantments himself, thinking that, if Fake's "incompetent" enchanting was good enough to get such praise, then since he's a "better" blacksmith, his enchanting should be mythical, expecting this will allow him to replace the Knight Captain's personal blacksmith; however, it's been months since the last time he did an enchantment, and it shows when the Knight Captain returns a few days later, furious, because the enchantment was so shoddy that his sword broke down mid-fight. Then once it's clear that Fake won't return, the court's blacksmiths actually have to perform their job for the first time in years with all swords being of a similar shoddy quality.
  • I Got a New Skill Every Time I Was Exiled, and After 100 Different Worlds, I Was Unmatched: The premise takes this trope to the extreme: the protagonist was just a simple mercenary who one day found himself in a white room with nothing but instructions and doors to other worlds; he was told that if he went to a hundred worlds, joined the hero party there, and then got kicked out, he would be able to return to his world. He also gets a powerful new "Exiled Skill" every time he's exiled: after getting exiled for the 100th time by slacking off,note  he's then told to visit one of the worlds where he was exiled from before he can return to his own world, so he decides to return to the first world he visited ten years after he left, back when he was powerless and merely served as a humble porter for the party. He expects to see a world where the hero has defeated the demon lord, only to discover that the hero party died trying to defeat the demon lord, and humanity is losing against the demons: he learns from the Sole Survivor Tia, the one who got him exiled for his own safety, that they had trouble finding a porter who not only carried their items, but also did their chores and other tasks for them, and the porter that they did eventually find betrayed them and teleported out with all their supplies right when they were facing the Demon King's army, resulting in their defeat. Wanting to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, he uses his last "Exiled Skill" to send all his memories and skills to himself right when he started his journeys across the worlds in order to help set this world and all the others on the path towards a happier ending.
  • I Left My A-Rank Party to Help My Former Students Reach the Dungeon Depths!: Yuke Feldio gets fed up with his party treating him like a chore boy due to him being The Red Mage Support Party Member, and tells them to raise his pay or he quits; they choose "quit", thinking he's replaceable. While the party takes this in stride at first, a couple chapters later show them struggling on the fourth floor of a dungeon where they've previously been able to make it to the tenth floor, at least. It's at this point that it's revealed that, while the party was able to make it to A-Rank, not only did they overestimate their base combat abilities (i.e. the strength that they had without support magic), they had also ranked up without any actual knowledge of the usefulness of certain items (like monster repellants) and they didn't have a surplus of healing items, nearly leading to the death of one of their party members and guess who helped with all of those issues? However, when they try to get Yuke to come back, he's long since started a new, very successful party with some girls he'd taught at the Adventure Guild between quests, and tells them to pound sand.
  • I Quit Being An Adventurer: Invoked. Aix is horribly overworked and underpaid by the heavily corrupt guild master of his adventurer's guild, who charges clients for a high rate but only gives Aix a pittance. When Aix arrives a few minutes late to the guild master's monthly self-aggrandizing "rousing speech", the guild master destroys Aix's guild card in a tantrum and demands that he beg to be admitted for even worse conditions. Instead, Aix angrily quits on the spot. Within a few days, the tools, barriers, and other magical effects the guild relied on start to fail, because they were 100% reliant on Aix's extended duration buffs that he traded his Archmage-level magic for. Now, no matter what the guild master or his professional butt-kissing receptionist do or offer, Aix doesn't trust them and won't come back; karma catches up quickly.
  • I'm a Curse Crafter, and I Don't Need an S-Rank Party! But They're Artifact Class!: Gail, the titular Curse Crafter fired from his S-Rank party on the grounds of being useless, as In-Universe Curse Crafters are seen as only good at crafting one-time-use buff/debuff items, and in general are viewed as an inferior support class; in reality, Gail himself is actually extremely skilled in both crafting and curses, but is a bit of a Ditzy Genius at best and a Cloudcuckoolander at worst due to a severe lack of common sense, not knowing just how powerful some of his creations and effects were. In fact, the reason he was considered "weak" was due to his low stats, which in turn was because of a powerful curse he placed on himself in exchange for empowering his teammates: when he leaves, he undoes this curse (not out of malice, but more out of an odd sense of professional courtesy); this leaves his former party much weaker, resulting in them being able to do virtually no quests, with the mage replacing Gail quickly leaving them unable to stand their inability to take responsibility for their actions and blaming everything on a guy who's no longer there. Meanwhile, Gail himself goes on to sell his goods as a merchant, which is not easy since not only are all of his items cursed, but he has a rather macabre sense of taste - most of his buyers are actually after the dispelling talismans that he gives for free with each purchase, which are much cheaper than the church's prices for dispelling. His wares include Artifact-level items that make the "curse" attached virtually negliable: one example being a ring he unknowingly sells to a local princess that shares his aesthetic taste - the ring can't be taken off (which seems to be the only downside) but it provides protective buffs, including an immunity to death magic, that are only heard about in another Artifact with a higher cost. When word of these wares start to reach higher echelons, they assume it's some sort of ploy to destabilize the balance of power by distributing Artifact-ranked gear, never thinking that the vendor (who they never realize is Gail) is utterly unaware of how rare his talents are; finally, after a failed attempt at revenge, the S-Rank party is essentially turned into slaves by the princess to make them pay back the debt they made when they were working for her to find Gail, who she wanted to thank rather than punish as the party thought.
  • In I'm Glad They Kicked Me From The Hero's Party... but why're you following me, Great Saintess?, the Hero banishes the party's supporter, Ariake, due to his having not been blessed with any "special skills", ignorant that his hidden skills had contributed to massive power increases for all the party members until he'd already left and they found themselves severely weakened without him. The aforementioned Great Saintess is the sole person in the party that was fully aware of Ariake's contributions and saw this coming, chewing the rest of the team out for their stupidity a few weeks later when they cockily enter a dungeon and nearly die early on due to lack of preparation, after which she leaves the party in order to find Ariake and confess her love for him; even Ariake himself underestimated how crucial his Status Buff abilities were, being (as the title says) glad the Hero kicked him out of the party because he thought that meant they were strong enough to no longer need his assistance.
  • The (former) Hero party from I Stopped Working Because I Was Expelled From The Hero's Party After They Denounced Me as a Coward disintegrates from the personality flaws of its own members after they get rid of martial artist Nicola (quite literally stabbing him In the Back in the process): the arrogant hero gets his ass kicked by the Demon Lord and his power sucked out, and of his two Battle Harem members, one winds up captured by the Demon Lord's army and the other lands in prison.
  • This trope is deconstructed in The Incompetent Relegated Prince Wants To Hide His Abilities: Noah, the seventh prince of the Gaita Niiga Kingdom, is scorned as inept by his own family and stripped of his right to the throne; in actuality, Noah is the hero of legend who has Born-Again Immortality and after serving the royal palace as a sage in his first life and dashing through battlefields as a sword saint in his second life, he is undergoing Heroic BSoD and wants to use his third life as sort of an extended vacation. Unfortunately, his overwhelming power makes being Willfully Weak a virtual impossibility, and due to a combination of Unluckily Lucky and his Chronic Hero Syndrome (whether he wants to admit he has it or not), he suffers from a Plague of Good Fortune any time he tries to invoke Obfuscating Stupidity; because of this, his father and older brother are Hated by All for revoking his right to the throne and banishing him as they are seen as complete idiots.
  • Journey to the West: Every now and then, Pigsy and Sandy grow tired of Wukong (who admittedly is a dick whenever he can get away with it), talk Xuanzang into kicking him out of the team, and then all of them get into a big mess that only Wukong can fix. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat...
  • KonoSuba:
    • The series pulls both an inversion and zigzag when Kazuma and Dust switch parties after the latter displays jealousy of Kazuma's Battle Harem: by the end of the day, Dust's party is impressed with Kazuma's competence, skills and creative thinking, while Dust is unable to handle the girls from Kazuma's party and begs him to switch back. The zigzagging part comes from the fact that Dust's departure didn't affect his own team too much, so the switch back mostly came down to tolerance and preference.
    • Later in the series, it's shown that in the right circumstances Kazuma's party are genuinely amazing. Aqua's healing powers and mastery of art means that she heals any wounded just about instantly and can rebuild damaged portions of the fortress walls to be even stronger than before,note  Darkness gains the admiration of the frontline fighters due to being able to Draw Aggro and tank just about anything the Demon King's army throws at her, and Megumin's Explosion Magic far exceeds anything the other magic users in the fortress have. Kazuma himself is openly despised as a "mere" Adventurer, the lowest possible class. However, it's also shown that as an adventuring party, only Kazuma is able to handle the idiosyncrasies of the girls and direct them effectively as a team; in addition, it's also shown that thanks to Kazuma taking advantage of the fact Adventurers can learn any skill (in addition to his abilities mentioned above), he can actually be an astoundingly dangerous opponent: he demonstrates this by absolutely plowing through the Royal Guard (made up of high-ranking warriors and wizards) twice.
  • Let This Grieving Soul Retire! inverts this: Krai knows that he's not as powerful and talented as anyone in his S Rank Party, or the other adventuring parties that have been recruited into their clan. But he's a good tactician, a good diplomat and a good administrator and his party appreciates those qualities and aren't letting him get away if they can help it so instead of kicking him out they start by making him party leader and then promote him to boss of the entire clan; worse then that in his eyes is that every move he makes is interpreted as a stroke of genius.
  • The Merchant Princes Series: Miriam starts a business on one of the alternate Earths designing safety equipment for its steam-powered cars, but due to plot reasons later has to hand over day-to-day operations to a member of her Clan. She later finds out that one of her top scientists got fired because said Pointy-Haired Boss was annoyed at him "playing with rubber" instead of "working". She reads said manager the riot act, since he's misunderstood them to be a manufacturing company (he thinks making brake pads is the totality of the business), not an engineering company (as mentioned, they design equipment, they don't just build it), and he just fired their senior materials scientist. She orders him to rehire the man and apologize.
  • My Magical Career at Court: Living the Dream After My Nightmare Boss Fired Me from the Mages' Guild! has Noelle, a former top graduate of an extremely prestigious magic academy who is stuck working for an extremely exploitative guild making basic magic items: she is fired for failing to meet the absolutely ridiculous quotas set and blackballed from working in town by the guildmaster, who is the mayor's son. After she is promptly picked up by her old rival/study friend to work in the royal court, it's revealed that her prodigious magical ability and work ethic was the only reason that the guild was even remaining afloat; no one else is either capable of handling the insane workload or reproducing her quality, and the only reason any of the other workers hadn't already quit was because she hadn't quit, so they walk out en masse the very next time the guildmaster throws his weight around. In the end, the guildmaster and his number two are stuck trying to fulfill a contract to produce a large amount of high-quality magic items by themselves and realizing just how very screwed they are.
  • My Repair Skill Became An Almighty Cheat features the protagonist Luke who is scorned as "eternal E-rank" by the adventurer's guild because he only has one skill [Repair] and has been unable to take part in combat for decades: as he's serving as an Utility Party Member for the "Hero" party under Falcon, days deep in a dangerous dungeon, Falcon himself carelessly disrupts and misplaces the barrier protecting the party's supplies. When the party realizes their supplies have been looted by monsters, Luke has the blame dumped entirely on him, and when he protests his innocence, Blanc, the White Mage of the party paralyzes him and has the party leave him to die, under the pretext that with one less mouth to feed, they can better ration what remains. Sure, Falcon also had a [Repair] skill, but he wasn't as good as Luke, so Falcon's sword breaks during the climactic battle from lack of proper maintenance; Luke, on the other hand, reaches max-level in his [Repair] skill and becomes a genuine and famed hero as a result.
  • My Older Sister is a Sword Saint and My Younger Sister is a Sage: The L'arc Kingdom is a meritocracy country that values talent above all else, and those with valuable talents are granted special privileges and wealth, while the unlucky talentless are poor; unfortunately for Prince Razel, he's one of the unlucky talentless and no matter how much he trains, he never gets stronger: this is why the story begins with Razel's father, the King banishing him based solely on his lack of talent. While it is true that Razel would be a liability in battle, the King failed to take into account how strongly his daughters, Lifanel and Luciana would feel about their brother's banishment, given their intense love for Razel: Lifanel and Luciana are the Sword Saint and Sage respectively, making them the strongest assets L'arc has, but they only love Razel and consider their father a fool. Once they learn Razel was banished and taken to another country by their friend Rayleft, they drop everything (and blow up her father's room, in Luciana's case) to find go him so they can be together again, leaving L'arc without some of their strongest warriors.
  • Nichiasa Reincarnation: Cyan thinks that his party will experience this trope after abandon him, ignoring the fact that they actually all resign from his party and return the equipment because he was preoccupied with attempt to recruit warrior miko to his party and neglecting them after the insectarium incident, especially when Neries, one of the member was so traumatized by the defeat. When they instead ask Yuugo for help with Neries' practical exam and start making progress instead of begging for him to return as how the trope usually go, he resorted to sabotaging the practical exam Neries was participating only to be found out, getting beat up by both Yuugo's friend and his former party member and expelled from the academy for his trouble.
  • The Oddball Ladys Fiance has Rachel O'Klein leaving her family behind after they reveal they thought she'll never succeed as an alchemist like them. Once she starts living with the Rowinster family, Rachel's beliefs that her brother is nowhere near the alchemist she is proves to be head on: William soon finds the family is losing money and he continues to waste his funds on better materials.
  • Roll Over and Die starts with the hero party's wizard Jean taking it upon himself to sell protagonist Flum Apricot into slavery (lying to her that it was a group decision and telling the party she quit), because she's useless in combat due to her stats being permanently zeroes, and because he wants to make the heroine Cyrill his wife and sees her friendship with Flum as an obstacle. The party's morale rapidly plummets because Jean didn't realize how much Flum had been The Heart of the team, and by book three, several members have quit the quest altogether. Flum has much better fortune: after discovering the true purpose of her Reversal special ability and using it to escape the slavers (adopting another slave, Milkit, in the process), she sets herself up as a solo adventurer and begins digging into the church conspiracy underpinning the hero party's quest.
  • Saint Of Black Kite: The saint Russel is kicked out of the Hero's party for being considered useless due to only being able to heal, which became redundant after the other members learned healing skills themselves; however, instead of the usual formula of the saint's former party immediately running in trouble without him, they first meet a fellow adventurer named Katie who immediately explains that they need a specialized healer, as even the average Priest would learn healing abilities faster and at far lower levels than any of them could. Meanwhile, Russel has learned that his Saint class is as such that he's already learned all the most powerful healing spells possible before even reaching Level 10, and so makes a deal with an adventurer named Sybilla to learn offensive Dark Magic in exchange for his growing abundance of Empty Levels.
  • Star Wars Legends: During the time of conflict between the Jedi and Sith, the Jedi Order had established a third branch of their Order that would fill in the spot that a Jedi Guardian and Jedi Consular were lacking in: the Jedi Sentinel. The Sentinels' served as the Jedi Orders' dedicated Black Ops specialists who had skillsets that were tailored to being able to hunt down both Sith and Dark Jedi, along with employing various means to dispatch of them; means that the rest of the Order looked down upon with distain despite their effectiveness. Once the Sith were said to be extinct, the Jedi Order had recalled all Jedi Sentinels back to Coruscant to disband the branch and reorganize them as the Jedi Temple Guards: who were tasked solely with protecting the Temple Grounds. Yet, the Sentinel Corps did more for the Galaxy than just hunting down Sith and Dark Jedi, they served within local law enforcement on worlds throughout the Mid and Outer Rim by using investigation and espionage skillsets that their Corps had honed which served to make the Mid and Outer Rims safer. The Sentinel Corps' absence coupled with the demilitarization of the Galactic Republic at the time eventually led to Space Pirates and Criminal Cartels like The Hutts encroaching into the Mid and Outer Rims; while the Jedi Order retreated inwards to only listen to the needs of the Galactic Republic and its Senate; unwilling to consider that some of its Senators didn't attain their positions through fair or just means that would result in certain Senators contracting the Jedi on several occasions. And in both cases, this resulted in the creation of The Confederacy of Independant Systems which was formed in-response to the Republic denying protective aid to Mid Rim Worlds or sending their Jedi attack dogs to unknowingly make things worse for Outer Rim Worlds. It took The Clone Wars, Order 66, and rise of The Galactic Empire for the small handful of surviving Jedi Padawans and Knights to finally realize just how badly the Order had really screwed the Galaxy up by dismantling the Sentinel Corps in the first place.
  • Starting a New Life for the Discarded All-Rounder does this on a cultural scale: the country from which protagonist Roa hails has a very rigid and flawed apprenticeship system to decide jobs and adventurer roles; all apprentices are dubbed "All rounders" or less charitable terms, until the guy they're mentoring under decides to certify them as legit. Any apprentice who tries to switch mentor or gets expelled is treated as radioactive by other available mentors; the top brass utterly refuses to see how the system is ripe for abuse, telling themselves and anyone who will listen that they've got a "flawless" system that weeds out the riff-raff and brings forward the cream of the crop, letting 80% of the apprentices fall by the wayside. This results in an epic and unprecedented disaster when the "Hero's Party" takes in the orphaned Roa, exploits him as little more than an unpaid intern for seven years, steals his accomplishments, including passing off his Gryphon and twin Fenrir pups as theirs, and has him do all the party logistics, forcing him to earn money on the side to live on, because unpaid intern. Then they "brilliantly" deduce that him being in the party once they've managed to gain the coveted A-rank on his back, they don't want the "shame of a talentless loser who has been an 'All Rounder' for seven years" associated with them, literally throwing him and kicking him out, with little more than the clothes on his back, hoping he'd die in a ditch somewhere. Once Roa's familiars clue in to what happened, they abandon the party to their fate, where said party instigated a golem stampede, just because they thought themselves better than Roa and felt like they didn't need to read the instructions he left behind; after a disaster of this scale, the top brass starts sending assassins at Roa so they can delude themselves into thinking the system is still flawless, rather than actually address and redress the flaws, out of pride and sloth.
  • In The Healer Who Was Banished From His Party, Is, in Fact, the Strongest, Laust is blamed for their defeat against the Hydra on account of being a poor healer and expelled: for once they have a point, in that Laust is an infamously poor healer for his skill due to knowing only the basic Heal spell and being unable to learn anything else. But he also happened to compensate with other skills that made him the party's strongest fighter by far even without the hidden power that is triggered when he's furious enough, having successfully cut off two of the Hydra's heads before the party's thief was poisoned and they had to retreat... as the leader had also refused to buy the antidotes on account of having a healer. Their following attempt against the still weakened Hydra, this time with a proper healer, goes even worse because Laust wasn't available to do his part to damage the monster on top of the leader still refusing to buy the antidotes against the advice of the new healer.
  • The Strongest Tanks Labyrinth Raids has quite an intricate version of this: the hero Kyglas, the leader of Rud's party, is famous for his special skill that deals massive damage (seemingly) without repercussions, while Rud is regarded as a poor tank, as his Absorb Shield (the setting's equivalent to HP), depletes very quickly. It's only after Kyglas kicks Rud out of the party for being weak (and, possibly, so that he can turn his party into a Battle Harem) that everyone realizes that the real reason why the party struggled was because of Kyglas himself: his real ability was to strengthen his attack by draining his own Absorb Shield; no one noticed, because Rud's hidden skill Sacrifice Shield allowed him to absorb the damage dealt to his teammates. Thus, the reason why his Absorb Shield kept failing faster than everyone else's was that he was absorbing everyone else's damage, as well as unknowingly paying the cost for Kyglas' skill; without Rud, everyone starts taking the damage, and Kyglass is forced to deplete his own Absorb Shield, which is unable to handle nearly as much damage as Rud's was, to power his skill. This results in his attacks being much weaker: the good news is that, unlike a lot of other examples, the rest of the party was against dismissing Rud to begin with, and even Kyglas himself eventually lets go of his pride and admits that he was in the wrong.
  • The Support Mage Yearns for Party Banishment ~ The World Is in a Banishment Boom, but the Party Members Who Think Too Highly of Me Never Want to Let Me Go subverts this trope: the protagonist expects this to happen due to his own lack of self-esteem and a rising public stigma against support classes. The party setup also initially seems like it will support this kind of development with everyone being an "attacker" class and a male "hero" leading the party who would be motivated to ditch the protagonist in order to have the attention of the female party members all to himself; in reality, it's a Harem Genre-style story where the rest of the party are all smitten with the protagonist (including the leader, who is a girl pretending to be male to dissuade outsiders from thinking it's an all-female party) and also acknowledges just how valuable his role and unique magic are.
  • The Too-Perfect Saint: Tossed Aside by My Fiancé and Sold to Another Kingdom: Second prince Julius sells the country's saint Phillia, who is also his fiancé, to a neighboring country that needs a replacement saint due to disliking her for being too competent (as in telling him what to do to defend the country), her emotionless personality, and preferring her cuter sister Mia. However not only was Phillia known as the strongest and most talented saint their country ever knew, but all the extra jobs she did and he complained about were truly needed to protect the country, with the gap she leaves causing problems to the soldiers, who are now overwhelmed by the monsters, and her replacement Mia, who is too inexperienced in her new role. Unlike other examples Julius and Phillia's stepparents were the only ones that approved Phillia's transferring, with the prince only getting away with it due to the king being too ill to do anything about it. Mia herself is outraged at the fact that they sold her beloved older sister away and tricks Julius into the warzone trying to make him see reality; after the second prince shows he won't change and even dares to think he can just take Phillia back in his cowardice, Mia starts planning Julius' downfall.
  • Trash Skill Gacha: Crest Bahurst has only met suffering due to his father and brothers hating him since his mother suffered Death by Childbirth when he was born: when he appears to be about to find a reprieve after he has a prophetic dream about getting a skill... he discovers that the skill doesn't work and he doesn't know how to make it work. His father, enraged, exiles him to the Lower World, expecting Crest to be killed by the monsters that inhabit it - and the very next day, a prophecy by the local church's head reveals that Crest's presence will be fundamental to save the kingdom from an incoming huge monster attack; the King decides that, should Crest return, he will become the next Duke Bahurst and have free hand in punishing his family. Of course, by this time, not only is Crest still alive, he has figured out how to make his power work - and doesn't want anything to do with his family or the world that let him be horribly mistreated.
  • Tsuihou Suru Gawa No Monogatari turns this trope on its head while still playing it straight: Silver-Rank party Stardust banishes Support Party Member Est in the typical fashion, and he leaves resentful; however, it is revealed that this was not done out of genuine malice, but because the increased rank of the party was meaning increased dangers and the members were genuinely afraid they would not be able to protect Est from the foes they would face, a fear that was not helped by him suffering a serious wound shortly before this decision was made. Each member is also well aware of the noncombat contributions Est made regularly and how much he could enhance their fighting ability, but they still made the decision to protect him; while Est goes on the typical route of discovering strength that makes him overpowered (and his resentment growing), Stardust is stuck trying to unlearn all of their tactics that revolved around Est's support at the same time they are working in a new and unfamiliar party member.
  • Welcome to the Impregnable Demon King Castle plays with the formula: in a world where dungeon delving is closer to a televised combat sport, Remme the Black mage is kicked out of the fourth ranked party because his debuffs are not flashy and have no visual appeal on broadcast; this is done over the vociferous protestations of Phoenix, the party leader and Remme's childhood friend. Predictably, the party struggles without Remme's support and has to recruit another hero class adventurer to bolster their firepower; Remme is instead hired by the Demon King and functionally becomes the final boss of her dungeon creating the titular "Impregnable Demon King Castle". While his former party remain formidable enough to make it to the final floor of the castle, Remme's combination of black magic, tactical skill, and complete knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses allow him and his party of demons to beat them quite conclusively.
  • Welcome To the "Outcasts' Guild ~The Incompetent S-Rank Parties Keep Expelling Competent Party Members, so I'm Creating the Strongest Guild by Recruiting the Weakest~" runs this trope on a higher level in a world where parties and guilds live with a system that judge solely on stats instead of skills for any would be adventurer, leading to a high rating of adventurers who are exiled: Aizen, the protagonist, has the ability to see others' skills, so he sets out to change the status quo by recruiting outcasts of S-Rank parties to prove the world wrong.
    • His first recruit would be Virienne of the Silver Wolf Brigade, who Aizen notices has a sensor skill that allows her to perceive danger and monsters' weak points without her realizing it: he quickly deduces her old party won't last without her scouting skills, and sure enough, their next journey has them falling to a trap her ex-leader Sylvio fails to notice, killing everyone but him.
    • His second recruit, Maika of Aegis, is a beastman who's skill can nullify all magic attacks and status effects against one of her party's allies, at the cost of a chunk of her max magic point;. Aegis then takes on a quest to fight an Aqua Hydra, where their Tank Cyrus dies due to believing he could nullify magic himself.
  • The White Mage who was banished from the Hero's Party is picked up by an S-Rank Adventurer follows the usual formula of the Hero kicking out a party member, Lloyd, because his white magic doesn't appear to do anything useful, with the only teammate that appears to be close to disagreeing being Lina, the shield-woman. While Lloyd is picked up and welcomed by Ishtar's strongest adventurer party, it only takes one quest for things to go pear-shaped for the Hero's party, as they get curb-stomped by a group of monsters that was usually easy meat for them (with Lina losing an arm in the fight) - because Lloyd's so good with enhancement magic he can do it to fifty-plus people at once, while the common white mage can barely do two enhancements at the same time at best.

Live-Action TV 

  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In the lead up to the finale, the Scoobies and the Potentials, having had enough with Buffy's failings as a leader, oust her from the team to the point they throw her out of her own house. Unfortunately, not only does this leave the team without a leader, but Buffy was the only person who knew exactly what they were going up against. Spike, of all people, points out to them what a terrible move that was.
  • Community: Pierce is The Friend Nobody Likes in the study group, an Insufferable Imbecile who is usually more obnoxious than helpful. In "The Art of Discourse" he offends Shirley so grievously that the rest of the group finally loses their patience and kicks him out. Then they start squabbling with one another. Abed, Genre Savvy as ever, realizes this is because Pierce is not around to be the obvious Butt-Monkey. Their group dynamic depends on a Jerkass like him.
  • Employed in one episode of Hogan's Heroes. When the POWs go undercover in a cannon factory to sabotage it, Newkirk (who had been acting as the foreman) ends up getting unwittingly drafted into the German army, and despite his best efforts to fail the enlistment, he ends up passingnote  and is nearly assigned to Stalag 13. Fortunately, Hogan manages to get him out by showing the factory manager a sabotaged cannon, claiming it was due to the loss of the former foreman who kept things like that from happening, leading the manager to ask for Newkirk to be discharged immediately.

Video Games 

  • The Tales Series does this a lot:
    • Tales of Eternia: Before going to the Ruins of Volt, Keele has to stay behind to work with Shileska's scientists. Being forced to deal with the ruin's puzzles without Keele gives Reid and Farah a new appreciation for what their friend brings to the table.
    • Tales of Symphonia examines the long-term consequences of this in detail, but not with the player's party. Martel was the White Magician Girl and The Heart of the Precursor Heroes, as well as her brother's Morality Chain. Her murder sent all of the survivors across the Despair Event Horizon while Mithos in particular simply snapped, leading directly to the crisis that the player's party need to solve thousands of years later.
    • Tales of Vesperia: Estelle, the only real White Mage of the party, is unavailable for a while due to Alexei kidnapping her, leaving you without her healing artes. This is Downplayed gameplay-wise in that it's not too difficult to make up for that by buying a bunch of healing items. After the fight with Zagi, the party directly points out how much trouble they're in without Estelle's mass healing artes.
    • A more glaring example happens in Tales of Arise with Shionne, who similar to Estelle above is one of the healers of the group and is kidnapped by Vholran. Unlike Vesperia, however, healing in general is much more limited in this game, both having the game economy of not giving a lot of Gald to work with early on alongside recovery items being scarce and having a Mana Meter in Cure Points (that does NOT recover on its own) that the party has to use in order to use healing spells both in and out of battle. Also while another party member, Dohalim, is still capable of using healing artes, his healing artes are single target, while Shionne's are capable of healing the entire party. And to really drive her absence home, Shionne takes Alphen's Flaming Sword with her, limiting his battle capabilities (especially if you're playing as him), and the next Boss Battle you face is a flying enemy, which just so happens to be Shionne's specialty.

Web Animation 

  • AoHaru Manga Library: Happens in several different stories whenever Keiichi gets fired by a Bad Boss, the company starts going downhill after his departure: as it turns out that he was doing far more work than his boss realized, forcing them to track Keiichi down and beg him to come back; however, Keiichi always rejects them, as he's already made himself comfortable elsewhere, either by getting hired by another company or starting his own.
  • ATTACK on MIKA:
    • After getting hit by a car and having to go to the hospital, Mika's parents and her sister, Lilina, decide to kick her out of the house while she's recovering at the hospital, viewing her as useless; however, without her, the house becomes a mess and without her cooking Lilina's meals or using her salary to pay her medical fees, she becomes fat and lazy: er parents beg her to come home, but she cuts ties with them completely.
    • Yutaka gets kicked out of his own house by his wife, Konomi, and his daughter, Aila, after they discover a $1,500 pay slip in his room and believe that he only makes that much per month, despite them always using his credit cards on excessive shopping sprees. A few months later, after Yutaka goes through with the divorce, Konomi calls him and demands that he come home immediately due to the bills and rent not having been paid; in addition, both she and Aila are hiding from debt collectors since she has not paid any of the credit card bills. After hearing one of Yutaka's coworkers call him "boss," Yutaka reveals that he is actually a business owner who creates and sells companies; he also reveals that the $1,500 pay slip she found is actually 10% of his monthly income, with the rest being used to pay the bills and the rent. Hearing this, Konomi tells him to come back; however, Yutaka refuses and hangs up, leaving both her and Aila at the debt collectors' mercy.
  • Manga Rabbit HoméNoba: One story has Tomoya working for his best friend Hideki as their studio's scenario writer... until he learns Hideki was dating his girlfriend, Iyami, behind his back and is promptly fired. Three years later, Hideki's desperately begging his former friend to come back: while he took over Tomoya's work, his scripts turned out mediocre, and they started hemorrhaging employees. This forced Hideki to rely on outsourcing, driving him to the verge of bankruptcy; his only hope of saving the company is convincing Tomoya to return, but Tomoya's already started his own videogame company with Hoshikawa.
  • Manga-Waido
    • Souta Nagato is seen as useless as he takes so many hours to get his work done to the point of working overtime eventually, the CEO gets fed up and fires him; however, it turns out that he is very popular with their clients and the reason why takes so many hours' because all of his coworkers (except Mao Nanase) make him do their work for them as well as fix their mistakes: unsurprisingly, they're unable to complete their work without him and the company went bankrupt six months later.
    • Reina wants her brother, Hiroki, kicked out of their parents' mansion because she sees him as useless and ugly; however, he soon gives her documents so that she can pay the bills he previously was paying since he was no longer living there. And as a bonus, she stole money from her mother to treat herself, which results in her being kicked out; Hiroki even states that if she wasn't so horrible, she would've still been able to live in the mansion.
    • Takeru and Nori conspire to frame and kick Shota out of their company because they perceive him as useless and an obstacle for them to do a hostile takeover on the company; however, many angry clients complain about Shota's sudden departure because he was the one who set up the deals with them, leading Shota himself to expose the duo. It is also revealed that Nori also conspired to have Takeru himself fired so he can become the next CEO; after the truth is out, Mr. Sugisaki decides to fire both Takeru and Nori for their actions and make Shota the next CEO.
  • Sekai no Fushigi:
    • Akuji believed that he could use his supposed best friend, Koki, to help him start his own mobile app business, then force him out once everything was running smoothly and steal his girlfriend; however, as Koki was the one who handled "all the nitty gritty," the apps started to fall apart once he was gone. Akuji begs him to come back: unsurprisingly, Koki refuses, instead deciding to start his own company.
    • Mizuki's manager and girlfriend Chika, who are in a secret relationship with each other, deliberately sabotaged his work in the hopes to get him fired, even going so far to tear up the manual he made and throw away the flash file he saved for the company to be able to function without him: Mizuki resigned before he could be fired, knowing full well the company would struggle without him, as he waited for the boss to hire him back with compensation.
    • Kazuki wanted Mizuki kicked from their mother's home for mooching off of her; however, it turned out that not only was Mizuki paying for their mother's expenses, but it turns out his actual job as a system engineer manager makes at least 20,000 a month; the kicker, the real reason why Kazuki and his wife wanted Mizuki gone is so they can mooch off of their mother while paying off their debts from their frivolous spending.
    • Downplayed with Koki Abe as he wasn't fired, but his hospitalization isn't treated as a loss by his coworkers, who found him useless due to his perceived incompetence; however, a series of disasters occur within the Genereal Affairs department, which they cannot solve, believing it to be caused by a rampaging monster: turns out Koki was the one who "kept the monster at bay" by fixing or preventing the aforementioned issues from occurring.

Web Original 

Western Animation 

  • Downplayed in Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers. As an episode rarely had all four Rangers, there were cases where one or two were assigned to the episode's problem, only to find that their missing teammates' skillsets would have easily solved things.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
    • In the two-part "The Siege of the North", when the Fire Nation attacks the Northern Water Tribe, Sokka joins a mission to infiltrate the invading forces; however, he gets taken off the mission by the village chief for fighting with his daughter Yue''s fiance, Hahnnote . This ended up being a mistake as without Sokka's insight and planning, the mission headed by the hot-headed Hahn was such a failure that it only got a brief moment of attention.
    • In the episode "Sokka's Master", Sokka complains that he feels like the load of the group given that he's the only non-bender, which some of the group members had already commented on in the past: once he is gone to train with his master, the other group members hang around aimlessly and joylessly, as their main planner and mood-refresher is gone; everyone is all but ecstatic as soon as Sokka returns.
  • King of the Hill: In "Snow Job", Buck Strickland suffers from a heart attack and has to be hospitalized, and he puts newcomer Lloyd Vickers in charge of Strickland Propane while he's recovering due to the fact that he has a business degree and that Arlen is experiencing snow, which means that customers will want to purchase more propane from them. Lloyd's tactics of increasing the prices and installing tattler systems in the propane trucks serve to earn Lloyd the antagonism of his coworkers, resulting in Joe Jack and all of Strickland's truck drivers to quit the company in protest; Lloyd says that he can simply call in his friends to drive the propane trucks, only for Joe Jack to ask if his friends have HazMat certifications, which are necessary for driving trucks filled with explosive materials. After telling Buck about this, Buck chews out Vickers for his idiocy in losing their drivers, because only HazMat-licensed drivers can drive the propane trucks; even if Lloyd were to try hiring other HazMat-certified drivers, because of the coldfront, every other potential HazMat-licensed driver in both Arlen and the greater Heimlich County area already have jobs.
  • The Loud House: In "No Spoilers", the children are planning their mother's birthday party; however, they leave the second-eldest one, Leni, out of the planning since she's terrible at keeping secrets and would spoil the surprise: they then realise that Leni is the only one who really knows what their mother Rita likes in a party, so they must bring her back to throw a party suited for Rita.
  • Metalocalypse: In "Dethsiduals", Murderface and Toki are kicked out of Dethklok and the remaining members attempt to write songs without them; while the band become much more productive without the two, they soon realize without the negative energy brought by Murderface, the quality of the music suffers, and the two are invited back.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
    • In "Princess Twilight Sparkle Part 2", when the Mane Six need to stop the Everfree Forest from covering Ponyville, Applejack and the others tell Twilight Sparkle to stay behind, arguing that as the acting leader of Equestrianote , they can't risk her on a dangerous mission; upon reaching their destination though, they realize without Twilight's magical know-how, none of them have any idea how to deal with the problem.
    • In "The Cutie Re-Mark" two-parter, Starlight Glimmer seeks vengeance by using time travel to stop child Rainbow Dash from performing the Sonic Rainboom preventing what would lead to her and the other Mane Six meeting; once Starlight learns this results in Bad Futures due to the heroes' absence, she realized revenge wasn't worth the harm caused and surrenders.
  • The Simpsons: Exaggerated in "Marge in Chains". Marge is arrested for shoplifting because she forgot to pay for grandpa's bottle of bourbon, losing the trust of the city (including gossiper Helen Lovejoy and neighbor Maude Flanders) and is sent to jail for 30 days. With her arrest, she was unable to assist the bake sale at the park (led by Helen and Maude), with the crowd leaving in disappointment when Marge wasn't present for the marshmallow squares, leaving the fundraising short $15 dollars for the statue of Abraham Lincoln; since they had to purchase the Jimmy Carter statue instead, the citizens were disgusted and started to riot: eventually, the townspeople start saying none of it would have happened if Marge was there.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants: In "SpongeBob, You're Fired!", Mr. Krabs fires SpongeBob, his best fry cook who helps bring in a majority of the Krusty Krab's customers, for the sole purpose of saving a nickel (and not a figurative amount of money, an actual nickel). When Squidward asks Mr. Krabs why he couldn't just fire him, Mr. Krabs tells Squidward that he can't since Squidward has seniority (this is despite the fact that corrupt bosses usually fire employees with seniority because they'd save more money that way). Mr. Krabs attempts to cook Krabby Patties by himself, claiming to have been a five-time Golden Spatula in the Navy; naturally, Mr. Krabs can't cook and the Krusty Krab nearly goes out of business. Mr. Krabs re-hires SpongeBob at the end of the episode, and installs a pay toilet to make up for the missing nickel.
  • Star Wars: The Bad Batch: An unusual variation occurs when the titular Bad Batch's resident Cold Sniper and all around Jerkass Crosshair ends up having his control chip activated to execute Order 66, making him far more prone to following orders when the Military Maverick team of clones couldn't care less about them. When the group is captured, Crosshair has his chip fully activated to make him a loyal Imperial stooge, forcing his team to leave him behind as he tries to kill them for betraying The Empire; his absence does affect the team like this trope usually plays out—without Crosshair watching point, the Batch, already struggling to adjust to a post-Republic galaxy, winds up getting their rears handed to them over and over again—but he still noticeably misses his team. It's when the finale strikes that things get very unusual with this trope: he had his chip removed so he could serve The Empire willingly, but he wants his brothers to join him, convinced this new order will be the only way they can serve their purpose as soldiers of war; they won't join him in the Empire, but he won't join them as mercenaries when offered the chance.

Real Life 

  • In Major League Baseball, the Boston Red Sox trading Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1919 is considered one of the most devastating blunders in the sport's history: Ruth had been trying to demand a higher salary for a while, and his manager, tired of giving non-answers to the issue, sold him behind his back and considered the matter settled. The problem was, it was Babe freaking Ruth that they sold — someone whose downright legendary skill simply couldn't be replaced: the Red Sox would proceed to not live it down, and the ripples of their mistake and resulting destroyed reputation could be felt for almost a century afterwards, long outliving Ruth himself, until they finally ended their decades-long championship drought in 2004. Sometimes it isn't only the absence of the teammate that's damaging; it's how that absence occurs.
  • In World War II, Adolf Hitler was hoping that this trope would come into play with the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt: he'd recalled how the death of Empress Elizabeth, during a war saved Prussia by causing the collapse of an anti-Prussian alliance Russia was the head of, and hoped Roosevelt dying would cause a similar collapse of the Allied Powers. He was banking on the event generating a Let's You and Him Fight that would see Germany allying with the Western Allies and his regime surviving; it didn't happen, or at least not fast enough to save Hitler.
  • This was the ultimate death knell of Bullfrog Productions, after Peter Molyneux left to form Lionhead Studios; now, Molyneux may be a controversial figure and we won't touch on that here, but he was incredibly good at shielding the company from Electronic Arts' Executive Meddling and so it was pretty much the only company under their thumb that managed to thrive. However, without him around to keep EA off their backs, EA more or less did to Bullfrog what The Combine did to Earth and ground them into dust — within three years of his departure they weren't making any games anymore, and a mere three years later they were dead in the ground.