Sannin

Team Hiruzen was a genin team led by Hiruzen Sarutobi. When the team was formed, the future Sannin were six years old and Hiruzen was already the Third Hokage. It is unknown when the team broke up: Jiraiya, Orochimaru, and Tsunade still acted like a team during the Second Shinobi World War. During a battle with Hanzō, the three would come to be known as Konoha's Sannin. The team has many parallels to Team 7. Every member of this team grew to become Kage level ninjas. With the exception of Jiraiya, they all became village leaders. All of them, at one point or the other, had given up being active Konoha shinobi due to various reasons.

Sannin
The Sannin are widely regarded for their great skill and power, each one has the level of being a Kage in their own right; each has been considered for the position of Hokage at different points in time, with Tsunade eventually obtaining the title upon the death of the Third Hokage. When Orochimaru defected from Konoha after being denied the position, the Sannin were disbanded, though they continued to be known by the title.

Missions
Team Hiruzen, minus Hiruzen Sarutobi, was assigned to locate Hiruko and assassinate him for conducting illegal experiments.
 * Assasinate Hiruko (Movie only)
 * Rank: Unknown
 * Status: Failure

Renown

 * Tsunade, the granddaughter of the First Hokage and grandniece of the Second Hokage, possesses a terribly unlucky addiction to gambling. She became famous during the ninja wars as the world's greatest medical-nin, and she trained Shizune and Sakura Haruno in the art of medical ninjutsu. She later took on the title of Fifth Hokage.
 * Orochimaru, called the prodigy of his generation, defected from Konoha, joined Akatsuki, and founded Otogakure. He sought to gain immortality via means of kinjutsu in order to learn every jutsu in existence. He taught Anko Mitarashi and Sasuke Uchiha, the latter of whom absorbed him. He was later sealed away by Itachi Uchiha.
 * Jiraiya, an eccentric man, wandered the world, discovered and trained under the toads and wrote "The Tale of the Utterly Gutsy Shinobi" and the Icha Icha series of novels. Later he became the teacher of Yahiko, Konan, Nagato, Minato Namikaze, and Naruto Uzumaki. He died while investigating Pain but in turn defeated and captured the Animal Path and left invaluable information that led to Pain's ultimate defeat.

Trivia

 * Each member of Team Hiruzen has trained one member of Team Kakashi. Jiraiya has trained Naruto, Tsunade has trained Sakura while Orochimaru trained Sasuke.
 * The Sannin are all masters of the Summoning Technique and summon using their left hand.
 * On more than one occasion, Team Hiruzen has been shown to wear similar type of clothing, ranging from armoured battle suits to robes with fishnets, a trait not very common amongst other teams.
 * Despite being three of the most powerful shinobi Konoha has ever produced, each of them departed from Konoha for different reasons. Orochimaru left to join Akatsuki and further develop his kinjutsu, Jiraiya went to gather information on Orochimaru, Akatsuki's movements, and find The Child of the Prophecy, and Tsunade lost all confidence in her healing ability and went into self-imposed exile.
 * The Sannin are named after the characters in the Japanese folktale Jiraiya Goketsu Monogatari.
 * The world wide game "scissors, paper, stone" originated from China during the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220), invented by the warlords of that period. Except instead of paper, they used the open palm symbol to represent cloth, so it's "Scissors, Stone, Cloth". The game reached Japan in the early 1640s and one variation of the game was the "Slug, Snake, Frog" variation. In this variation, the Frog is afraid of the Snake, the Snake is afraid of the Slug, and the Slug is afraid of the Frog. This is influenced by the Sansukumi way of thinking where it keeps the three objects in a deadlock. The fact that the Sannin use these three animals as summons may be the author hinting that there is no stronger one among them, and that their strength is more or less equal.
 * The Sannin once had a friend named Hiruko who later became a missing-nin that appeared in Naruto Shippūden 3: Inheritors of the Will of Fire.