History Main / SociopathicSoldier

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E80AQualityOfMercy A Quality of Mercy]]", new replacement is ''very'' eager to kill some enemies (Japanese soldiers, in this case), to the disgust of his {{shell shocked veteran}}s (well, they ''have'' been fighting longer than he had). This being ''The Twilight Zone'', he gets his comeuppance when he somehow becomes a Japanese soldier and is forced to obey an EvilCounterpart who repeats [[NotSoDifferentRemark his own bloodthirsty words]] back at him. AllJustADream, maybe, but he gets the message.

* ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'': Reese from the episode "The Siege of AR-558" is this. He is shown to be wearing a necklace of ketracel-white tubes (a type drug the enemy needs to survive) picked from killed Jem'Hadar and often sharpening a knife also taken from a dead enemy. He is also used to show the [[WarIsHell cruelty of war]] in that he survives while NiceGuy Kellin dies.

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': A new replacement is ''very'' eager to kill some enemies (Japanese soldiers, in this case), to the disgust of his {{shell shocked veteran}}s (well, they ''have'' been fighting longer than he had). This being ''The Twilight Zone'' he gets his comeuppance when he somehow becomes a Japanese soldier and is forced to obey an EvilCounterpart who repeats [[NotSoDifferentRemark his own bloodthirsty words]] back at him. AllJustADream, maybe, but he gets the message.

* ''Series/WKRPInCincinnati'' - Venus tells the about a fellow soldier in Vietnam named Weird Larry who would go out a night to "hunt" and would shoot anything. He describes him like a Broken Soldier, whereas Venus had become unable to shoot. On their way home, he jumped out of the helicopter. This led to Venus deserting after arriving in the States with only 3 weeks left until discharge.

--->'''Evil Soldier:''' I killed 12 dumb-ass scientists and not one of them fought back! This sucks!\\
'''Good Soldier:''' I didn't sign on for this shit... Monsters? Sure. But Civilians? Who ordered this operation anyway?

* In the ''Series/{{Highlander}}'' episode "Brothers in Arms", Andrew Cord is a Broken Soldier. During the American Civil War, he joined the Union Army's 54th Massachusetts Regment [[note]]a famous regiment composed of black enlisted soldiers with white officers; sadly, despite a magnificent combat record they still had to deal with prejudice and mistreatment from their own high command[[/note]], died in action and revived as an Immortal. He continued as a soldier fighting for causes he believed in, but when [[DespairEventHorizon fighting never seemed to do any good]], he [[SlowlySlippingIntoEvil slid from idealism to cynicism and finally sociopathy]]. Flashbacks reveal that when Joe Dawson served in Vietnam (and had both legs blown off by a land mine), Cord was Dawson's platoon sergeant. When another Marine in the platoon raped a Vietnamese girl and she threatened to report it, Cord killed her without hesitation. By the time Duncan meets him in the present day, he's a corrupt mercenary and arms dealer who thinks nothing of selling defective guns to revolutionaries and demanding payment even after the guns have proven useless in battle.

-->That one's still moving!\\
Hehe, spill on aisle 12!

* Noble Six in ''Fanfic/WolvesThatWalkAlone'' qualifies as a Broken Soldier thanks to the TrainingFromHell he received to become a SPARTAN-III and his experiences during the Human-Covenant War. If there's anything he can use to expedite his mission, he will use it regardless of how ruthless it may be, but he will ''never'' harm any civilian directly or indirectly.

* They [[LovesTheSoundOfScreaming don't get any more sociopathic]] than [[MadBomber Solf]] [[LovesTheSoundOfScreaming J.]] [[BloodKnight Kimblee]] from ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist''. He's essentially LackOfEmpathy in a uniform (and later, a hat and [[BadassInANiceSuit suit]]). He sees killing as part of his job... and Kimblee loves a job well done. His counterpart in [[Anime/FullMetalAlchemist the 2003 anime version]] [[CharacterExaggeration exaggerates]] this to the point where he's less this trope and more of a ForTheEvulz PsychoForHire.

** In the [[Anime/FullMetalAlchemist 2003 anime version]], we also have [[SmugSnake Lt. Colonel Frank Archer]], a textbook sociopath and Jingo who joined the army for the prestige, and out of his belief that WarIsGlorious. He manipulates the emotions of those forced to work with him, turns anime!Kimblee (a MisanthropeSupreme PsychoForHire and MadBomber) loose on Liore, and willingly hunts down anyone the government tells him is a threat. He is later promoted to a command rank, where his raging paranoia ensures his evolution into a GeneralRipper.

* Zaied, of ''LightNovel/FullMetalPanic'' is the hero's EvilCounterpart and a grown-up ChildSoldier turned [[HiredGuns mercenary]]. He's also a near [[EmptyShell emotionless]] [[LackOfEmpathy sociopath]], who thinks that [[NotAGame winning is all that matters in war]], and willingly [[{{Turncoat}} betrays his comrades]] in order to be on the winning side, later trying to kill his former friend [[TheHero Sousuke]] on the BigBad's orders. He never once looks back, bats an eye, or seems to think that he might have done anything wrong.

** Decil Galette of ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamAGE'' takes the worst qualities of both Yazan and Ali and combines them into a single, nasty [[EnfanteTerrible childsized]] package, treating war as a game and his victims as toys. The timeskip has not improved him, and the disconcerting enthusiasm he shows whenever's he's turned loose on his enemies is if anything more disturbing on a thirty-three-year-old.

* ''Manga/BlackLagoon'': In his backstory, the leader of the Special Forces unit Grey Fox killed a gang of these (led by a ColonelKilgore type) to protect Vietnamese civilians.

* Alexei Milchalov, leader of the Rusich Group in the [[UsefulNotes/RussiansWithRustingRockets army]] is infamous on the Russian internet for this behavior, most exemplified in the video of him [[KickTheDog brutally torturing, beheading, and eating a puppy]], then bragging on social media about it. A self-proclaimed Nazi sadist, Milchalov is the closest thing to a real CardCarryingVillain.

** Aldo Raine, the leader of the Basterds, is a pretty hard-core one once you look beneath the surface. He orders his squad to scalp one hundred Nazi soldiers each[[note]]that would total 1200 scalps[[/note]] or die trying, and his personal signature tool of terror is to carve a swastika on the forehead of any soldiers he leaves as the SoleSurvivor as a life-long reminder of which regime they served, even if [[OnlyFollowingOrders they were completely innocent otherwise]]. When he gets direct orders from command to escort [[OpportunisticBastard Colonel Hans Landa]] and his personal assistant to Allied headquarters and their recompense for double-crossing the Nazis and making Operation Kino a success, Raine unhesitatingly executes the assistant and carves a swastika on Landa's head the moment he's able to, without a care if this may or may not get him in very hot water with his superiors.

* Apparently, the various grunts in ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty 4'', especially the Ultranationalists, who purposefully are bombing whole villages.
** And from ''World at War'', Sgt. Reznov. He ''really'' likes killing Nazis. And also from ''[=WaW=]'', the soldiers from the VideoGame/NaziZombies mode. They're quite involved in their zombie killing.

* Along similar lines to Kimblee, Sir [[BloodKnight Luciano Bradley]] of ''Anime/CodeGeass'' is a PsychoForHire type who actually comments that he loves the military as it allows him to kill lots of people and get rewarded for doing so. Bradley even states he doesn't even care about the rewards, he just loves that being in the military lets him kill people. The fact that he's one of [[TheEmpire Britannia's]] Knights of the Round just means he can kill more people.
** And at least a good chunk of the Britannian troops. If a few simple words from your superior is enough to get you to gun down unarmed civilians without a sweat, there might be something wrong with you.

* They [[LovesTheSoundOfScreaming don't get any more sociopathic]] than [[MadBomber Solf]] [[LovesTheSoundOfScreaming J.]] [[BloodKnight Kimblee]] from ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist''. He's essentially LackOfEmpathy in a uniform (and later,NiceHat and [[BadassInANiceSuit suit]]). He sees killing as part of his job... and Kimblee loves a job well done. His counterpart in [[Anime/FullMetalAlchemist the 2003 anime version]] [[CharacterExaggeration exaggerates]] this to the point where he's less this trope and more of a ForTheEvulz PsychoForHire.

* They [[LovesTheSoundOfScreaming don't get any more sociopathic]] than [[MadBomber Solf]] [[LovesTheSoundOfScreaming J.]] [[BloodKnight Kimblee]] from ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist''. He's essentially LackOfEmpathy in a uniform (and later, a nice hat and [[BadassInANiceSuit suit]]). He sees killing as part of his job... and Kimblee loves a job well done. His counterpart in [[Anime/FullMetalAlchemist the 2003 anime version]] [[CharacterExaggeration exaggerates]] this to the point where he's less this trope and more of a ForTheEvulz PsychoForHire.

# '''The Unwilling Conscript:''' Your regular neighborhood boy who has been [[SlaveMook conscripted into the army]], has absolutely no interest in war, hates it all, and has only his own personal survival at stake. Often terrorized and brutalized by his own officers and noncoms. [[DangerousDeserter Extremely likely to desert and sell their own side out.]]

* Dilandau Albatou and his Dragon Slayers from ''Anime/TheVisionOfEscaflowne'' combine this with {{Tykebomb}}, TeensAreMonsters, and--in Dilandau's case--[[{{Pyromaniac}} Pyromania]] and a side of [[MoralMyopia hypocrisy]]. Dilandau gets to burn and kill whoever he wants to, but god forbid [[MinorInjuryOverreaction anyone so much as touch Dilandau]]. He's pretty much a PsychoForHire who only works for one employer.

* ''LightNovel/SagaOfTanyaTheEvil'': Tanya is an unusual example of an Unwilling Conscript playing the part of a Jingo, as she is a pacifist callously concerned only with her own self-preservation, and joined the military at a young age in hopes of improving her lot in life and working her way into a cushy desk job away from the front lines. Unfortunately, her combat acumen is so great that she constantly finds herself being sent to the frontlines and vents her rage and frustration on her enemies -- making her come across as the Psychopath.

* Deconstructed in the ''TwoFistedTales'' short story "Kill!", set in the Korean War. On the American side, we have Abner, who continuously sharpens his knife and can't wait to gut some Chinese, while in the Chinese camp we meet Li, who obsessively polishes his submachine gun and compares it to a beautiful woman. [[spoiler:In the end, they meet in the field, mortally wound each other and both die unceremoniously]].

* ''Comicbook/ThePunisher'' is usually interpreted as this to the point where he cannot even smile at the deeds he does (mentioned when he kills Bushwhacker.) He has essentially taken his war to the streets showing no [[Film/TheTerminator pity, remorse or fear]] against gangsters, psychos, killers, rapists, criminals or HiredGuns. Some suggest it was his experience in Vietnam that made him this way, making a DealWithTheDevil, all works show it was losing his family that made him nuts. Whatever the case he is a combination of the Jingo and the Broken Soldier, to the point where he regrets not having someone to kill, or even having a wife and kids in the first place (though this can be interpreted as if he didn't they wouldn't have been in the park, they wouldn't have been killed and that he wouldn't have turned into the sociopath he is today.)

* The Human Liberation Front in ''FanFic/TheConversionBureauTheOtherSideOfTheSpectrum'' is composed of every type save for Unwilling Conscripts. There's the Jingoes, who think they can do anything they want to invading ponies, PHL or not, because of their very association with the AdvancingWallOfDoom that's destroying their world. The Psychopaths are continually alluded to, and a lot of them happen [[DrivenToMadness to be broken by the traumas]] that set them on the road to being in the HLF. One such example is Victor Kraber, who left the group after a HeelRealization and has since then been TheAtoner (though he's still got an [[AxCrazy itchy]] [[BloodKnight trigger finger]] when it comes to the enemy forces).

* PBS documentary [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7cZuhqSzzc Genocide: Worse Than War]] seems to go more in depth about the first kind.

* Series/BandOfBrothers is rather ambiguous with this tropes, but Speirs exhibits traits of a psychotic killer more than once during the series. His men both fear him and tell stories of his brutality. Historians agree the real man was just a brutal soldier but not a murderer.

* Pretty much every [[OurOrcsAreDifferent Ork]], Dark Eldar, and follower of Chaos (especially Slaanesh worshipers) in ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}''. The rest are either [[KnightTemplar Knights Templar]], ScaryDogmaticAliens, the [[HordeOfAlienLocusts Tyranids]], or [[RedshirtArmy the]] Imperial Guard. And those who qualify among the Guard are usually borderline examples of TrainingFromHell ([[DeathWorld Catachan Jungle Fighters]]) or ShellShockedVeteran ([[PuttingOnTheReich Death Korps of Krieg]]).

** The [[TheEmpire Combine]] [[GasMaskMooks Overwatch Soldiers]] continue this trope in ''Videogame/HalfLife2'', but this time as Unwilling Conscripts. [[BrainwashedAndCrazy Heavily brainwashed]] and [[OrganicTechnology surgically altered]], they're [[LossOfIdentity treated as tools]] rather than living beings, even being stored unconscious on racks when not in use. Combine Soldiers speak with a rough monotone voice, and [[BeigeProse only do so]] to relay relevant tactical information to fellow Soldiers. In the field, they show [[TheStoic little-to-no emotion]] when killing dissidents or reporting squad casualties. [[NotSoStoic The only time]] any emotion is hinted at is when they're being [[FateWorseThanDeath threatened with]] [[ReassignedToAntarctica off-world reassignment]].

** Rico from the same series takes it up a step further, [[DesignatedHero and apparently is a good guy]]. His questionable tactics include wielding a heavy machine gun during a hostage situation and not settling for stealth when Helghast can be killed. It gets bad in ''VideoGame/{{Killzone 2}}'' when Templar decides in some strange fashion that he is worthy of not only heading up Alpha but also getting the charge to capture Visari. [[spoiler:Guess how it ends.]] In the manual for the first game, it's stated he was a Rhino Squad member, who were known for being unnecessarily violent.
* ''Videogame/TeamFortress2'': With all nine playable characters being agents of a PrivateMilitaryContractor, this trope was bound to happen.

** The [[{{Pyromaniac}} Pyro]] takes this furthest -- [[EveryoneHasStandards even the other mercenaries]], including their own teammates, regard [[AmbiguousGender them]] as being wildly sociopathic. Just about the only intelligible sound they can make is a maniacal laugh as they burn everyone around them to death. Their [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUhOnX8qt3I Meet The Pyro]] video revealed them to be ''far'' beyond mere sociopathy and actually [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness completely divorced from reality altogether]].

* Subverted with Trevor Phillips of ''Videogame/GrandTheftAutoV'', who despite completing his training as a helicopter pilot for the [[UsefulNotes/CanucksWithChinooks Royal Canadian Air Force]], failed the psychological evaluation which prevented him from actually joining.
* Frank Horrigan from ''Videogame/{{Fallout2}}''. He's easily one of the most psychotic and ruthless characters in the game, and possibly the entire series. He was bad enough in the Pre-War United States and became much worse after F.E.V. exposure turned him into a Super Mutant and the Enclave made him their top enforcer, outfitting him with the finest life support, PoweredArmor, and firepower.
* ''Videogame/{{Evolve}}'' has Hyde, of the psychopath variety. He joined the military as an alternative to jail time and was promptly assigned to the Chemtroopers, soldiers equipped with flesh and armor melting chemical weapons. While there, he refused to wear the filter mask so he could look into the eyes of the people he killed.
* Cliff Hudson from VideoGame/DeadRising is [[ShellShockedVeteran Broken Soldier]], being a psychopath in the game due to having [[TragicVillain a Vietnam flashback triggered by hearing his daughter getting ripped to shreds by zombies]]. He comes back to his senses after Frank West defeats him.

* ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands 3}}'': PlayedForLaughs. Maliwan's ground troops are ''ridiculously'' sociopathic, gleefully killing everyone in their path for the crime of [[OneNationUnderCopyright not using Maliwan products]]. The commander of the assault on Athenas shamelessly admits he's got an inferiority complex and is burning down the planet to impress his big brother, said big brother proudly says he taught his little brother everything he knows about murdering, and a random private reads aloud a little girl's diary about her horrible life as if it's a hilarious story.

* [[{{Expy}} Lieutenants]] [[StreetFighter Charles and Bravado]], from ''WebAnimation/BrokenSaints''.

* In the Franchise/{{Transformers}} mythos, it's harder to list a Decepticon or Predacon who ''[[MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch doesn't]]'' fit this trope than one who does. Though, seeing as the faction was founded by a sadistic madmachine and his like-minded followers, it's not hard to see why. Even the occasional Autobot or Maximal fits, though they are usually only [[TokenEvilTeammate tolerated]] if they are especially effective. Even then, they're kept on a short leash.

* Along similar lines to Kimblee, Sir Luciano [[BloodKnight Bradley]] of ''Anime/CodeGeass'' is a PsychoForHire type who actually comments that he loves the military as it allows him to kill lots of people and get rewarded for doing so. Bradley even states he doesn't even care about the rewards, he just loves that being in the military lets him kill people. The fact that he's one of [[TheEmpire Britannia's]] highest ranking and strongest soldiers just means he can kill more people.

* ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquer'': Most of the in-game unit audio will either have them take a dispassionate attitude towards engaging the enemy or display PatrioticFervor. However, there are a few that just come across as psychopaths who are in it ''for'' the killing, such as [[ILoveNuclearPower the Soviet Desolator units]], Yuri's ColdSniper DarkActionGirl Virus, and half the GLA army.

** Captain Edward Grey is a Broken Soldier who was broken by his experience in Akuze. Put through a [[Franchise/TheBourneSeries Treadstone]]-style programme to be brought back to combat readiness, while he still wants to do the right thing, he's quick to opt for the callous, vicious KillEmAll option against slavers, xenophobic lynch mobs and other criminal scum.

%%* Locus and [[spoiler:Felix]], from ''Machinima/RedVsBlue''.

** Animal Mother (an example of the Psycho for Hire variant) and Crazy Earl ([[TalkingToTheDead who's "befriended" a dead North Vietnamese]]) also qualify.

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