You're required to maneuver straight down this trench and skim the surface to this point!
The briefing before a mission, of whatever form.
In one form of this, the boss gets an aide to turn the lights down and run through a series of slides as he gives the briefing. One of these slides will be "the best photo we could get" of the Big Bad or The Dragon, and there will usually be a line to the effect of "we lost three men getting this out of Commie Land" or wherever.
Military briefings will either take place in a proper briefing room or theatre with relevant information displayed on The Big Board, or consist of a bunch of officers hunched over a map table.
Sometimes this is used for comedic effect when The Plan has to do with something non-military, and often not deserving of such seriousness. (Such as planning out how to get ice for the barbecue). Might be a way of lampshading Serious Business. Occasionally this is done by a person giving a briefing without an audience. Alternately, the comedic effect might come from a serious topic being briefed with whatever random objects are lying around standing in as props.
Allows a character to be Mr. Exposition about what will happen next in the story.
Naturally, these are frequently given before levels in Real-Time Strategy, First-Person Shooter, or Simulation Games.
Occasionally, the Mission Briefing will include This Page Will Self-Destruct and/or Obstacle Exposition. See also: Unspoken Plan Guarantee. Also compare En Route Sum-Up when the briefing occurs after the heroes have set off.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Area 88 features several briefings in all incarnations, since it's a series about a foreign legion air force.
- Played for Laughs in Full Metal Panic! Fumoffu, when Tessa temporarily attends Jindai High School and shows up to the pool in a School Swimsuit instead of the more modern athletic suits the other girls are wearing. She explains that Kurz Weber convinced her to wear it...and we get a flashback of Kurz running a full-on mission briefing about the School Swimsuit, complete with surveillance photos and 3D models. As Tessa watches in mild confusion, the other Mithril staff members in attendance (all male, natch) nod in solemn agreement.
- Genshiken has Madarame explaining at the clubroom every single detail of the titular group's visit to the "Comifes". Everything goes just as planned... except for Madarame, who destroys his arm and is taken to the infirmary after delivering a long-winded, dramatic pre-"death" speech.
- In Lucky Star Konata holds a mission briefing with Kagami and Tsukasa before entering Comiket (A large anime/manga convention). Tsukasa fails to follow the plan and soon falls victim to the enemy.
- Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045. Combined with Casual Danger Dialogue in the first episode when Motoko Kusanagi holds a VR briefing while driving a vehicle being chased by two other vehicles full of armed gunmen.
Comic Books
- DC: The New Frontier: In a scene that evokes the Star Wars briefing scenes, the greatest minds in America tell America's greatest heroes how to attack the Centre.
- In The DCU, Suicide Squad missions would usually start with a mission briefing delivered by Amanda Waller.
- Wonder Woman Vol 1: Back in the Golden Age Colonel (later General) Darnell would give mission briefings to his intelligence officer Steve Trevor with his secretary Dina Prince taking down notes or relating further information about every other issue.
Fan Works
- The four go through several of these in The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World: two each at the Guardians and Circle, and one with the Focus.
- The specific form and style of a Guild of Assassins contract is described in A.A. Pessimal's Gap Year Adventures
. Admittedly this one concerns the rescue of a Guild member who has got into trouble, but it conveys the general concept.
Films — Animated
- In Toy Story, Woody outlines the toys' attack on Sid, using a model built from dominoes and other objects from Sid's room.
Films — Live-Action
- The SEALs in Act of Valor conduct a number of briefings, mostly of the formal variety, before their missions.
- In Aliens, the Colonial Marines get a briefing before descending onto the planet. Later, they do a more detailed one, complete with a map table, to plan out how to barricade the aliens out of the complex while they wait for rescue (and then discuss how to get off the planet quicker when waiting becomes not an option).
- Apollo 13 has a mid-mission briefing, where Gene Kranz calls together his teams to inform them to forget the flight-plan; all of their careful planning is in the toilet and they are improvising a new mission from scratch, the sole objective being the safe return of Apollo 13 to Earth. Naturally, the overhead projector he starts using to illustrate this shorts out, leaving him with nothing but a blackboard, a room full of brilliant engineers with severely conflicting ideas on what to do next, and his own determination: "Failure is not an option!"
- Back to the Future
- In the first film, the Doc Brown of 1955 builds an elaborate model of Hill Valley to explain to Marty how he's going to get him back to 1985.
- He then does the same thing in Back to the Future Part III - Marty, familiar with the drill by now, finishes his line about it not being to scale. Of course, in both movies, the already-complex plan has to be stretched to accomodate a lot of last-minute changes.
- Several in The Bridge on the River Kwai, especially Shears' initial encounters with Major Warden.
- Several in a A Bridge Too Far, most notably General Horrocks who combines the briefing with Rousing Speech thanks to his A Father to His Men persona. It begins with some Heroic Self-Deprecation.
"Gentlemen, this is a story you will tell your grandchildren. And mightily bored they'll all be."
- Cyrus gives a hasty one with a sand table model in Con Air before the battle at the airfield.
Cyrus: Considering my audience, I'm going to make this very quick and very simple. [points to objects in sand] This is the boneyard, this is the hangar, this is our plane.
Viking: What's that?
Cyrus: That's a rock. [knocks it away] - Possibly one of the earliest examples; the model house rehearsal from The Dirty Dozen. Of course, because we hear it step by step, it doesn't go exactly as planned.
- Bruce Lee receives a briefing in Enter the Dragon before he goes to Han's island.
- Lawrence of Arabia plays with this trope. Some scenes are played straight, like Lawrence's first scene with General Murray and Mr. Dryden. ("What is the job?" "Find Prince Feisal.") Others are used more to develop Lawrence's character than to advance the plot, like his first meeting with General Allenby, where they spend a minute or so discussing strategy and the rest of the scene discussing the campaign's effect on Lawrence.
- Several briefings are shown in The Longest Day. During the glider assault on Pegasus Bridge, Major Howard mentally reviews what he's been told in his briefing - particularly the final part: "Hold until relieved."
- In both the original Ocean's Eleven and the remake Danny explains to the other ten how they plan on pulling off the heist in Las Vegas.
- In Prometheus, the mission briefing is elaborate, taking on the form of a Lecture as Exposition, featuring a Holographic Interface.
- Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, with Kevin Costner explaining how he's going to rescue the prisoners as they're being hanged.
- The Rock has the SEAL team leader brief first the Washington bigwigs on the overall plan, and later his team (plus Mason and Goodspeed) on the details.
- Star Wars:
- A New Hope has the briefing before the attack on the Death Star. Luke spoke up about how the impossible-seeming goal wasn't really. The briefing also includes a complete Exposition Diagram commented by Mr.Exposition himself, projecting the plans of an Air-Vent Passageway out of R2-D2's memory on The Big Board.
- The Empire Strikes Back has a much less formal one, with Leia outlining the plan for their Delaying Action and evacuation of their base on Hoth, and addressing the concerns raised by the pilots (nicely setting up the Ion Cannon that knocks out a Star Destroyer later on). Unusually, this plan goes off more or less exactly as she explained it would.
- And again in Return of the Jedi, as the Rebel Alliance plans for their assault on the second Death Star.
- And again in The Phantom Menace when R2D2 displays a hologram outlining the palace raid.
- Ditto The Force Awakens with the Resistance's assault on the First Order's Starkiller base, although most of the plan will have to be improvised on the site with Finn's knowledge of the base. And a great deal of luck.
- Rogue One Has a PA announcement informing the pilots to launch immediately, and that their squadron leaders would brief them en-route to their objective. This of course, is because the entire operation is a spur-of-the-moment decision the Rebel Alliance's leaders didn't have time to plan, their hand being forced by Rogue One and Admiral Raddus both going off on their own initiative.
- The computer simulation at the beginning of Titanic (1997) sort of functions as this, allowing the audience to easily follow what's happening when the ship starts sinking, freeing the characters from having to suddenly turn into Mr. Exposition in the middle of a disaster.
- Stinger gives one of these to the pilots before the final mission in Top Gun.
Literature
- In Flight of the Intruder, we see a far more impromptu version of this, with an officer running out to give Grafton his new mission as he is preparing to launch. As their missions are normally given very detailed planning, he isn't very happy. Their new objective, three North Vietnamese fighter jets spotted at an airfield, is a trap. They end up running into a flak barrage and The Boxman is killed.
- A few mission briefings pop up in Invasion of Kzarch, most notably one in a flashback, and one that involved planning a particularly dangerous strike. Which then proceeds to go completely wrong.
- Occasonally in A Practical Guide to Evil, since the main character, Catherine Foundling, is the commander of an army. Examples include her getting briefed by her mentor, the Black Knight, to hunt down the Silver Spears that attacked the supply-lanes of the Legions of Terror, or Catherine ordering two members of her True Companions, Masego and Indrani, to get the invading fae to attack her nemesis. That mission briefing is a failure, though, as both Masego and Indrani trust the other one to pay attention to the orders, as they are both preoccupied thinking about magic (Masego) or oggling their commander (Indrani) to actually learn what they should do, why, and to what end.
- Since it's a series about pilots, this happens regularly in the X-Wing Series. It's implied to happen before every mission. The readers see it either before something unexpected happens, forcing a change of plans, or because some important bit of character interaction shows up before, during, or after.
- Tucker Max gets a few of these in his stories that rely on more exposition than stream of consciousness for comedic effect.
Live-Action TV
- Alias has these practically Once an Episode— often more than once, and with debriefings as well. Television Without Pity dubbed the "Conference Room of Endless Exposition" as such for that reason.
- Battlestar Galactica makes use of this trope over and over again, during pre-flight briefings for pilots and battle planning throughout the series. As with the Stargate franchise, this is a military organization so it would be expected protocol. Used notably in episode 1.10 "The Hand of God" to explain to most of the main cast and the audience the plan of attack on a Cylon-occupied asteroid. The briefing also leaves out key details, because Adama was concerned about Cylon infiltrators, and also probably to demonstrate to President Roslin that he didn't like or trust her.
- Band of Brothers depicts formal briefings for both D-Day and Operation Market Garden, as well as less formal ones for patrols and individual battles.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Several examples with the Scooby Gang, most notably in the episode "Hush", which came complete with the lights turned down and an audiovisual presentation... but no spoken dialogue since their voices had all been stolen.
- Done as a Contrast Montage in "Doomed" to show the different methodology of the Initiative and the Scooby Gang. Buffy's Ragtag Bunch of Misfits brainstorms together, checks the Tome of Eldritch Lore and works things out, while the Initiative gives orders from superior to inferior, checks the (inaccurate) data files, and sticks to rigid orders. Later when Buffy joins the Initiative she keeps interrupting the briefing to ask questions and make jokes.
- Chuck: Mission briefings usually take the form of video calls from General Beckman in D.C., who serves as the team's Mission Control. The mission briefings happen everywhere from from the computer setup in Casey's house to the tricked-out home theater room in the Buy More.
- Dog the Bounty Hunter has the team gather for these before going after bail jumpers to review the relevant information on them.
- Almost a once per episode on JAG. Usually it is Admiral Chegwidden who, following the opening title sequence, hands a new case or mission to either Harm, Mac or to them both.
- Done Once an Episode on Leverage to describe the mark and his various evil activities using fancy slideshows, unusual in that it's Hardison who does it instead of Nate, the team's leader. Usually, everyone butts in with their own comments or the character who actually knows what they're talking about takes over the briefing.
- The much-parodied tape messages from Mission: Impossible:
"Your mission, Jim, should you decide to accept it, is to ____________. As always, should you or any of your IM Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions. This tape will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Jim."
- Get Smart. The above is parodied in "The Impossible Mission" when Agent 86's message briefing is delivered via tape:
"That is your mission, should you choose to accept it. Should you choose not to accept it, then you're fired."
- Both Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis do this about Once an Episode. The mission briefings are frequently sources of lasting funny quotes and snarky one-liners. This is protocol, since it is a military organization, which holds briefings before and debriefings after operations. Atlantis probably follows the same protocols since most of its personnel are in the Air Force.
- Starships/starbases featured on Star Trek will typically have a room specifically for this purpose. Usually just off The Bridge.
- Repeatedly parodied by Whose Line Is It Anyway?, usually by Greg Proops as the voice on the tape.
"If you or any of your team are caught or killed, I don't wanna know your butt. You're sad losers. This tape will self-destruct NOW!"
- The 100 has Clarke and Lexa give a briefing on their plan of attack against Mount Weather, complete with a scale model of the mountain.
Multiple Media
- MonsterVerse:
- Kong: Skull Island: The team gets a briefing before going onto the island which also serves to info dump details to the audience.
- In the Kong: Skull Island graphic novel sequel The Birth of Kong, Aaron is shown going over this with his expedition one last time onboard their Osprey when they're flying through Skull Island's storm.
- Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019):
- Dr. Graham and Colonel Foster give Mark, the G-Team and the Monarch brass a briefing at Castle Bravo, going over Jonah's raid on Outpost 61 and giving us a basic exposition on who Jonah is and Mothra's current whereabouts. This briefing was meant to be for a joint operation to Yunnan to prevent Jonah's mercs capturing Mothra, but Mark interrupts the briefing and guesses (correctly it turns out) that Jonah is expecting Monarch to remain distracted focusing on Mothra whilst he and his mercs move on to their next target.
- During the third act, Colonel Foster gives the rest of the G-Team a fast-paced run-down explaining King Ghidorah's presence in Washington DC and that all four branches of the military will work together to keep Ghidorah occupied as a decoy.
Tabletop Games
- In Paranoia, the PCs play a team of Troubleshooters sent out on missions, so naturally there's always a Mission Briefing early on. Although, this being Paranoia, getting to the briefing is often a challenge in itself. Sometimes finding the briefing is a challenge. Sometimes a clone or two gets killed before the team makes it there.
- Of course, this being Paranoia, even when/if you arrive, just surviving the mission briefing long enough to be sent on the mission is often an adventure in itself.
Video Games
- Almost every mission in the Ace Combat games is prefaced with a briefing, usually with a wire-grid map with marked targets in the PS2 titles. If the map is blank, that is a very very bad sign.
- The Command & Conquer series used full-screen FMV briefings from the onset, with occasional twists:
- During the GDI campaign of Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn one of your objectives gets Lost in Transmission, while over the first half of the Brotherhood of Nod campaign your intelligence grows increasingly inaccurate.
- Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun was a departure in that the FMVs depicted someone else receiving a briefing. To help make up for this, the following map screen gave the player additional information as well as the option to complete side missions that affected the main mission.
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 may like mission briefings a little too much. Before every mission you're given an full-screen FMV briefing, being told what your mission is. Then you go to a world map where the female officer tells you your mission in more detail. Then you finally go to another screen where a computerized voice shows a map of the mission itself, telling you what to do in even more detail. Some missions even have further briefings once you're on the field.
- The first Command & Conquer: Generals game didn't put much effort into its briefings, only giving you a voice-over as you stared at a map while the level loaded. Its Zero Hour expansion mixed things up with news reports that described what was going on, followed by instructions from your Mission Control once the level started.
- Company of Heroes gave you a mission briefing (with the map as a visual) at the outset of each mission. These would appear periodically throughout each mission, to provide more detail about either the next objective (if the player had just completed one of a series of tasks in the level) or how the player was expected to respond to a drastic change in the situation (if one had been scripted).
- Far Cry 2 notably has no actual mission briefing of sorts, however, after the first five minutes (or so) of cinematic gameplay, you end up in a bed unable to move, where you are confronted by the Big Bad, who reads your mission objectives to you.
- F.E.A.R. features a mission briefing at the beginning of the game from the protagonist's point of view. During the briefing, you're introduced to the main allies and the source of your abilities is more or less explained. It ends up ultimately unnecessary.
- You start each level in Heavenly Bodies with a brief description of your assignment. Once you actually start playing, you can pull a document from a nearby console to gain a list of what challenges you'll need to complete, along with a few maps and diagrams of the level.
- Each Mass Effect game has at least one, of varying degree of detail. Mass Effect 3 had the most, with briefings for most of the main campaign missions. Meanwhile, Mass Effect 2 allowed the player to make key decisions during the pre-mission brief, which would affect the outcome of the mission.
- Every single MechWarrior and MechCommander mission is prefaced by a text, audio, or video briefing. No surprise, given that all these games are martial in nature. These briefings are usually the only thing providing context to your mission, and will occasionally clue you in on any nasty surprises the mission might have waiting for you. The Mechwarrior 2 series was notable for providing tons of background fluff text as extra additions to their otherwise straightforward briefings—like the briefings themselves, these fluff text bits occasionally provided helpful hints that would not otherwise be revealed anywhere else (such as the specific weaknesses of certain enemies).
- Mega Man Legends: Prequel title "The Misadventures of Tron Bonne" has a mission briefing before each stage, where Tron lays out the objective to her Servbots. The player can get a view of whichever vehicle is being used for the mission, change the Gustaff's weapon (if applicable), and select a number of Servbots to accompany.
- While you oftentimes didn't see any physical briefing, all of the Metroid games have Samus on a mission, and starting with Super Metroid, Samus or the narration usually gives some kind of textual mission briefing at the start of the game. Other games in the series have had varying amounts of ingame mission briefings as the situation on the ground changes, further varying according to how much explicit story each game has in general.
- The Naval Ops series has a briefing before each mission that lays out your objectives, likely enemies, and suggested armament.
- S.W.A.T. loves its mission briefings and prefaces each new mission with one. The game will usually provide voice overs between your officer and their handler regarding the nature of the mission, objectives, threats, and any other potential problems that may arise. That last detail is particularly important, since it often entails things such as the presence of hostages, traps, or important suspects to try and take down non-violently.
- Team Fortress 2: When you join a server, you get the bare bones of your mission presented to you in an old-timey black and white movie (and on Territory Control, what parts of the map have been won by which teams drawn on the blackboard).
- Unreal Tournament III: occasionally the characters are shown in a briefing room in cinematics. A minimalist example is done at every mission loading screen; schematics and still shots are displayed with a summation that sounds like it's being delivered in a briefing.
- The mission brief is a staple of the Wing Commander games, which isn't really surprising given that WC's setting is a military one. Also where one can find one of the early swipes at Maniac:
Halcyon: I thought so. Now, let's look at your patrol plan, Maverick. It's a simple three-point route, with a few asteroids near Nav 2. Keep alert. We really don?t know what to expect out there, but we know we're in hairball territory. Just fly your route and get back with a report—and if Maniac gives you any static, you have my permission to shoot him to pieces.
Maverick: Should I use missiles, sir, or ship's guns?
Halcyon: Guns, Maverick. Save your missiles for important targets.
Maniac: What?!
Halcyon: Squadron dismissed. - In XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2, when missions pop up you only get a brief summary for them before you choose a strike team, it's only after the squad is en route on the Skyranger that Central Officer Bradford gives you a briefing that also serves as a loading screen. Bradford usually will have more to say at the start of the mission, and will chime in during it to update your progress or chew you out for taking too long.
Web Comics
- Elliot's parents provide a Mission Briefing for furniture shopping in the El Goonish Shive story arc "Indiana Elliot And The Temple Of Swedish Furniture."
- The anti-anomaly team receives one in Autumn Bay.
Web Original
- JonTron's take on Takeshi's Challenge starts with one of these.
- Leeroy Jenkins Video: The PALS FOR LIFE party is in the middle of one when Leeroy Jenkins suddenly decides to rush headlong into the dungeon on his own. To be fair, it’s not like the plan they were discussing would have actually worked anyway.
Western Animation
- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids. Always ended by Wally dragging Elvis the dog into the lair and the computer's sneeze blasting the team out of the room.
- In the Futurama episode "War Is the H-Word," Earth declares war on Spheron I, a planet that commanding general Zapp Brannigan describes in a briefing as devoid of any natural resources and possessing no strategic value. Zapp Brannigan briefs the troops in front of a large Earth Government flag, a parody of the opening scene of the movie Patton. Richard Nixon's head also joins in.
- The Houndcats parodied the Mission: Impossible briefings at the start of every episode.
- In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode Hurricane Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash explains "tornado duty" military style to the Ponyville pegasi, including an instruction video.
