History Main / ForeverWar

** A fate inflicted on them as a particularly terrible punishment: it's set up so they inflict hell on themselves, and they've been fighting long enough and hate each other enough that even starfleets famed speeches AND a bajoran Kai can't get them to stop.

** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS4E6TheDoctorsDaughter The Doctor's Daughter]]". Two sides are relentlessly cloning soldiers to keep the war going. TheReveal is that [[spoiler:they've been fighting for ''seven days''. They go through about twenty generations in a day, so their knowledge corrupts incredibly fast]].

* The background of war in the HonorHarrington series has every indication of being eternal, as it has outlasted ''two'' major revolutions on one side, major government shakeups on the other, and keeps on expanding. The war in this case has actually taken on a life of its own, and will be fought as long as there are resources to fight with.
** Perhaps not for much longer. Both sides have lost their offensive abilities, and when Manticore has built enough new ships their new technology and tactics will be able to crush Haven if they have to.
** Another example: the Grayson Civil War and the Grayson-Masadan Wars had been fought on and off for centuries.

* Fritz Leiber wrote a series of novellas and short stories about the Change War, a war of {{time travel}}lers between "the Spiders" and "the Snakes." The two sides span galaxies and species as well as ages, and no one, at least no one the reader meets, knows what the war is about. Both sides are trying to redesign the history of the universe, but no one knows to what end, nor does the war appear to even have a history.

->'''Red Soldier #1''': Meh,works for me.

** The first strip sums up the trope in the nutshell, as seen above.
** It should be pointed out that the first strip was also like this - the two characters wondering why they are fighting, only to conclude that they want to win.

->'''Red Soldier #2''': Why do we fight? To win the war.

** The eternal war between the Sontarans and the Rutans, which gets mentioned each time one or other race appears in the series. It has lasted ''at least'' for ''50 to 70 thousand years''.

** The eternal war between the Sontarans and the Rutans, which gets mentioned each time one or other race appears in the series.

-> '''Thrax''': And when the war is over? What will we do then?
-> '''Sharos''': For us, the war will never be over.

* ''[[http://www.blastwavecomic.com/index.php?p=comic&nro=42 Gone With the Blastwave]]''.

* In ''The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,'' by Mark Twain, Huck gets caught up in a feud between the Grangerford and Sheperdson families. This is a new concept to him. His friend Buck Grangerford explains : "Well," says Buck, "a feud is this way: A man has a quarrel with another man, and kills him; then that other man's brother kills HIM; then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the COUSINS chip in—and by and by everybody's killed off, and there ain't no more feud. But it's kind of slow, and takes a long time." "Has this one been going on long, Buck?" "Well, I should RECKON! It started thirty year ago, or som'ers along there. There was trouble 'bout something, and then a lawsuit to settle it; and the suit went agin one of the men, and so he up and shot the man that won the suit—which he would naturally do, of course. Anybody would." "What was the trouble about, Buck?—land?" "I reckon maybe—I don't know." "Well, who done the shooting? Was it a Grangerford or a Shepherdson?" "Laws, how do I know? It was so long ago." "Don't anybody know?" "Oh, yes, pa knows, I reckon, and some of the other old people; but they don't know now what the row was about in the first place."

* A major part of the Star Wars expanded universe novel Shatterpoint is the war that has been going on for ages between the Korunai native to Haruun Kal and the Balawai, or foreigners.

* The ''DoctorWho'' episode "The Doctor's Daughter." Two sides are relentlessly cloning soldiers to keep the war going. TheReveal is that [[spoiler:they've been fighting for ''seven days''. They go through about twenty generations in a day, so their knowledge corrupts incredibly fast.]]
** And in old ''Doctor Who'', the war between Atrios and Zeos in "The Armageddon Factor". It eventually turns out that [[spoiler:Zeons have been dead or gone for years, but the supercomputer built to organise the war effort has been keeping things going without them.]]
** And, of course, the eternal war between the Sontarans and the Rutans, which gets mentioned each time one or other race appears in the series.
*** Let us not forget the long running conflict between the Thals and the Kaleds on the planet Skaro. A conflict only brought to an end when an OmnicidalManiac was placed in charge of peace negotiations. Which kinda started a whole bunch of new conflicts.

** Add the Sunni-Shiite Arab divide, which has its roots in a battle fought after the death of the Prophet back in 650 AD. So, the latest battle being the Iraq war, the war has lasted for 1359 years...

* In ''The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,'' by Mark Twain, Huck gets caught up in a feud between the Grangerford and Sheperdson families. This is a new concept to him. His friend Buck Grangerford explains : "Well," says Buck, "a feud is this way: A man has a quarrel with another man, and kills him; then that other man's brother kills HIM; then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the COUSINS chip in—and by and by everybody's killed off, and there ain't no more feud. But it's kind of slow, and takes a long time."
"Has this one been going on long, Buck?"
"Well, I should RECKON! It started thirty year ago, or som'ers along there. There was trouble 'bout something, and then a lawsuit to settle it; and the suit went agin one of the men, and so he up and shot the man that won the suit—which he would naturally do, of course. Anybody would."
"What was the trouble about, Buck?—land?"
"I reckon maybe—I don't know."
"Well, who done the shooting? Was it a Grangerford or a Shepherdson?"
"Laws, how do I know? It was so long ago."
"Don't anybody know?"
"Oh, yes, pa knows, I reckon, and some of the other old people; but they don't know now what the row was about in the first place."

** The Kree of course because Space Nazis who kill anyone non-Kree for "polluting the gene pool" (despite the fact they are a genetic dead end)

** The Kree of course because Space Nazis who kill anyone non-kree for "polluting the genepool" (despite the fact they are a genetic dead end)

* Joe Haldeman's ''{{The Forever War}}'': Interstellar distances and mis-communications leads to thousands of years of warfare even more pointless than usual. The setting's form of FasterThanLightTravel involves lots of TimeDilation, allowing William Mandella (the narrator) to survive the entire war, despite it lasting approximately 1143 years and Mandella going on fewer than half a dozen patrols.

** Also worth noting are the Chaos Space Marine Legions. Horus originally insighted them to rebellion through a number of arguments (the Emperor wasn't paying proper attention to the Imperium, the Emperor wasn't worthy of ruling the Imperium, the Space Marines deserved to rule the Imperium which they had essentially built, etc.), and several Primarchs had personal grievances against the way the Emperor was doing things (although a few rebelled simply out of loyalty to Horus). However, even by the end of that war, most of the reasoning behind the rebellion had been largely forgotten in favour of general slaugter and destruction. After ten thousand years of endless fighting against the Imperium (not to mention amongst themselves), the Chaos Legions are long past the point where they know or care what they were fighting for; most now simply fight for different variations of [[BloodKnight the sake of fighting]].
* ''{{DungeonsAndDragons}}'' featurs the Blood War, a battle between the [[OrderVersusChaos Chaos-aligned Demons and Law-aligned Devils]] which had been raging pretty much since the beginning of existence and was expected to keep raging until the end... or so everyone else hoped, since it's generally accepted that if the two sides were to ever put aside their differences, everyone else would be royally screwed.
* The Swedish post-apocalyptic game "Mutant:Heirs of the Apocalypse", feature a nation called Ulvriket (roughly translated as Wolfland, or Wolfreich if you want to capture the spirit of the game). Ulvriket is locked in a eternal war with two ancient enemies; some tribes of mutated ice-nomads and with an ancient robot army. To boot; they are currently expanding in to a new area, opening up another front, and are trying to expand further in to Sweden (the game takes place in Scandinavia, and Ulvriket is located in Denmark). The regime is a paranoid bunch of tyrannical war-mongerers, who cares little for the inhabitants. Did I mention that in order to fight their three-front war against the more advanced robot, enormous and brave mutant and guerilla factions of Sweden; all they get is propaganda, half-witted officers and a rough equivalent to 18-century rifles?

* ''{{Starlancer}}'' takes place in a hundred-years-long war between the Alliance (basically like Future NATO) and the Coalition (Future Warzaw Pact); the Alliance sending its last survivors elsewhere is what kickstarts the plot of ''{{Freelancer}}''.

*** It's worth noting, however, that due to the futuristic setting and the increased life expectencies that come with technological advances that this is not exactly a straight example, as many would probably live throughout it and most would know why it started.

* The war between the Terran Confederacy and the Kilrathi Empire protrayed in ''{{Wing Commander}}'' may not be all that old (this troper's failing memory suggests the whole thing lasted between 35 and 50 years), but it fits the rest of this trope to a tee. By the time Wing Commander III rolls around, the war is older than most (all?) of your wingmen, and the only reason it looks like it could end any time soon is that the Kilrathi are very slowly gaining an upper hand.
* The various nations of the ''IronGrip'' series have been periodicaly fighting each other for entire centuries, if not millenia. War is almost an accepted way of life in this steampunky CrapsackWorld.

*** Let us not forget the long running conflict between the Thals and the Kaleds on the planet Skaro. A conflict only brought to an end when an OmnicidalManiac was placed in charge of peace negotiations. Which kinda started a whole bunch of new conflicts, SoYeah.

*The Intersteller Wars in Traveller. Also the fighting between the Third Imperium and the Zhodani.