Sannin

Team Hiruzen was a genin team led by Hiruzen Sarutobi. When the team was formed, the three genin were only six years old and Hiruzen was already the Third Hokage. It is unknown when each team member became Jōnin, but they worked together during the Second Shinobi World War. During their battle with Hanzō, the three would be the only Konoha shinobi to survive the skrimish. Impressed with their power, Hanzō named the three the of Konoha. The three would later become legends in the shinobi world, though Team Hiruzen dissolved with Orochimaru's defection from Konoha.

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.

With Orochimaru's defection, each of the Sannin would eventually leave Konoha, though Tsunade and Jiraiya would remain loyal to the village. Orochimaru would join Akatsuki and later created Otogakure. Tsunade after suffering loss during the wars would travel the world while Jiraiya would follow Orochimaru's actions and later Akatsuki with the goal to protect Konoha from any future threats. Hiruzen would retire as Hokage, naming Minato Namikaze the Fourth Hokage until his death during the Nine-Tails' attack of the village and having to reclaim the title of Third. He would remain the Third until Orochimaru's Invasion of Konoha which resulted in his death. Three years later, Orochimaru would be permanently sealed by Itachi Uchiha, and Jiraiya would be killed by his former student Pain, leaving Tsunade as the only surviving Sannin.

Missions
Team Hiruzen, minus Hiruzen Sarutobi, was assigned to locate Hiruko and assassinate him for conducting illegal experiments. This failed, as Hiruko escaped from the village by the time the Sannin reached his lab.
 * 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.