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More than just a football game

— Curtis LeMay, General, US Air Force "The Soviets are our adversary. Our enemy is the Navy."

In a perfect world, the various branches of a government (local, regional or central) should be able to cooperate and pull their resources together for the greater good.

The world is not perfect.

When it does not, one of the reasons usually is Interservice Rivalry, where at least two branches of the government don't work well together, sometimes openly opposing and working against each other. Usually if the leaders of said branches know each other, they can't let go of their past feelings and it intensifies the rivalry. Often in military fiction (and in real life as well), some amount of Interservice Rivalry will be encouraged by the higher-ups, to promote a competitive spirit but sometimes it can get out of hand. Sometimes it is even used by a dark Chessmaster leader to maintain control. That way if the army ever rebels against him, he can always call in the navy to fight for him.

On the other hand, particularly in military-centric works where both services in question are meant to be sympathetic, it's used as a source of humor in the form of personnel of either service making fun of each other, good-naturedly or not.

Cases of Interservice Rivalry can cause Jurisdiction Friction and Divided We Fall. Compare Right Hand vs. Left Hand. See also CIA Evil, FBI Good, in cases where direct conflict between the two is depicted. There is also Truth in Television to this.

Examples:

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Comic Books

The Green Lantern Corps in general has had a number of inter-service rivalries, notably with rival interstellar police agencies the L.E.G.I.O.N. and the Darkstars, and (to varying degrees) with the various other Lantern Corps. In the Secret Origin storyline during Geoff Johns' run, it is revealed that Hal Jordan and John Stewart first met on opposite sides of a bar fight — when Jordan was in the Air Force and Stewart was a Marine. Even before that revelation, the rivalry often came up when Hal and John found themselves working together during Johns' run: John liked to bash Air Force pilots for being undisciplined hotheads (calling the Air Force a "country club"), and Hal liked to bash Marines for being idiotic thugs.

During a ferocious firefight in The Punisher MAX between Frank Castle (a former Marine Force Recon officer) and Barracuda (who is ex-Army special forces) who had abducted Castle's infant daughter , Castle curses 'Cuda out calling him an "Army puke". In the Barracuda miniseries the FBI, NSA, DEA and CIA are all cooperating to find Barracuda before he can restore the flow of drugs from Santa Morricone. Naturally, each agency has its own agenda and will make sure to prevent the others don't interfere with it.

, Castle curses 'Cuda out calling him an "Army puke". Nick Fury (a former Army Ranger) is known to make comments pertaining to "Deck monkeys" and "Candy-ass marines".

During Gung-Ho's first appearance in the G.I. Joe comic, Rock'N'Roll was notoriously pissed to have a marine in the team.

The Shield (an Army Super Soldier) had a series of issues where he teamed up with Magog (a Marine given powers by the predecessors to the New Gods). They spent as much time sniping at each other as punching out the bad guys.

The Avengers: Captain Marvel (U.S. Air Force veteran Carol Danvers) and Captain America (U.S. Army veteran Steve Rogers) have been shown trading jabs about their respective services.

Jay Faerber's Dynamo5 features F.L.A.G. (the Foundation for Law and Government), which is responsible for superhero activity in the United States. Robert Kirkman's Invincible features the G.D.A. (Global Defence Agency) which is responsible for protecting the Earth from superhuman and extra-terrestrial threats, and has at least one superhero team on its payroll. They don't get on too well.

Kobra attempted a variant by pitting Checkmate, the Suicide Squad, the Force of July, and Project Captain Atom against each other, abducting key personnel and bombing their bases in ways that cast suspicion on the others, so he can fire his microwave cannon unmolested. This was the Janus Directive crossover; part of the fallout was the restructuring of all said agencies under the authority of Sarge Steel to avoid another such incident.

In Drownt