History Main / WarISHell

* ''WebVideo/LifeSMP'': Out of all the seasons, the first one, ''3rd Life'', encapsulates it the best. While the season starts out with faction politics as the main source of conflict, the latter half of the season drives home the point how the escalating conflict as a ''war'' has brought nothing but horrors for everyone. By the last two sessions of the season, even the relatively pacifistic players have had to take up arms, former friends have drifted apart and turned against each other as leading figures on opposite sides, most server-members have lost allies and friends (and in at least one case, [[CrusadingWidow suffered from bereavement]]) before being taken out themselves -- oftentimes without mercy, and even the "winning" faction has destroyed their home in the process and ultimately gets a DownerEnding by the nature of the DeadlyGame itself.

* Recent Franchise/{{Transformers}} series such as [[WesternAnimation/TransformersAnimated Animated]], [[WesternAnimation/TransformersPrime Prime]] and [[Film/{{Transformers}} the live-action films]] portray the Autobot-Decepticon war as this. This went back as far as ''WesternAnimation/TransformersTheMovie'', where a single battle saw the termination of numerous recognizable faces (albeit because [[MerchandiseDriven Hasbro wanted to remove the entire existing cast to make way for new toys]].) The oldest example of this trope in play in the Transformers franchise comes from the G1 episode "The Golden Lagoon." [[ActualPacifist Beachcomber]] finds a tranquil glen filled with beautiful plants and animals, and also a pool filled with "electrum," a golden liquid that makes any Transformer coated in it invulnerable. Naturally, the Decepticons end up finding it, and they fight for control. In the end, Beachcomber is left looking forlornly at the glen, now utterly destroy, and gives a mournful "[[PyrrhicVictory we won]]."

* This is implied to have been the case for the Trainer-Ranger Wars mentioned in ''Fanfic/PokemonResetBloodlines''. The last one ocurred around forty years before the beginning of the story, and even in the present time there's considerable animosity lingering between the Trainer and Ranger nations. Lt. Surge, a veteran of the last war, is implied to have lost many comrades and witnessed many horrors during his time in the military.

[[WaxingLyrical War! Hunh! Good God, y'all! What is it good for? Absolutely nuthin'!]] TruthInTelevision, obviously.

->''"I’ve been where you are now and I know just how you feel. It’s entirely natural that there should beat in the breast of every one of you a hope and desire that some day you can use the skill you have acquired here. ''Suppress it!'' You don’t know the horrible aspects of war. I’ve been through two wars and I know. I’ve seen cities and homes in ashes. I’ve seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, [[TropeNamers war is Hell]]!"''
-->-- '''UsefulNotes/WilliamTecumsehSherman''' speaking to the graduating class of the Michigan Military Academy on June 19, 1879.[[note]]Maybe. This quote comes from the account of an onlooker named Charles Oliver Brown writing several decades later. The [[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015071498037&view=1up&seq=1 published text]]of the speech contains no such quote. Sherman ''did,'' however, say something close to this in 1864 when he told the residents of Atlanta [[http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/sherman/sherman-to-burn-atlanta.html why he was going to burn their city]].[[/note]]

* ''WebVideo/LifeSMP'': Out of all the seasons, the first one, ''3rd Life'', encapsulates it the best. While the season starts out with faction politics as the main source of conflict, the latter half of the season drives home the point how the escalating conflict as a ''war'' has brought nothing but horrors for everyone. By the last two sessions of the season, even the relatively pacifistic players have had to take up arms, former friends have drifted apart and turned against each other as leading figures on opposite sides, most server-members have lost allies and friends (and in at least one case, suffered from bereavement) before being taken out themselves -- oftentimes without mercy, and even the "winning" faction has destroyed their home in the process and ultimately gets a DownerEnding by the nature of the DeadlyGame itself.

--> '''Steven''': So, sh-she saved the world -- that's good!
--> '''Greg''': No such thing as a good war, kiddo. Gems were destroyed, people too. In the end, your mother could only save a handful of her closest friends.

* Universal Cartoon Studios productions

* The UrExample of this trope may be the Geoffrey de Charny's manual for young knights from 1346, which describes the life of knight in a very cruel ways. The book, about the life of a knight, included the psychological consequences of being a knight – and they strongly resemble the symptoms of the post-traumatic stress disorder. In his book, de Charny advises knights on how to relate to the fact that they must kill people when they are at war. He also mentions some of the hardships knights face: poor sleep, hunger, and a feeling that even nature is going against them.

''War. *grunt* What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.''

* ''Series/KamenRiderBuild'' provides a [[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids disturbingly]] realistic portrait of civil war breaking out between three city states. It doesn't matter that the focus is mostly on people in PoweredArmor[=s=] fighting each other, monsters and robots. The story question violence, dehumanization and [[SocialDarwinist social Darwinism]] through them. Also, we meet Kazumi Sawatari, who has this as half of his life philosophy [[note]] The other half is the importance of friendship, family and kindness [[/note]] . Unless he has a good reason not to, he will react in a violent manner to anyone, who doesn't understand or acknowledge that War Is Hell.

* ''Series/KamenRiderBuild'' provides a [[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids disturbingly]] realistic portrait of civil war breaking out between three city states. It doesn't matter that the focus is mostly on people in PoweredArmor[='s=] fighting each other, monsters and robots. The story question violence, dehumanization and [[SocialDarwinist social Darwinism]] through them. Also, we meet Kazumi Sawatari, who has this as half of his life philosophy [[note]] The other half is the importance of friendship, family and kindness [[/note]] . Unless he has a good reason not to, he will react in a violent manner to anyone, who doesn't understand or acknowledge that War Is Hell.

-->'''O'Brien:''' I don't hate you, Cardassian. I hate what ''I'' became, because of ''you''.

** In life Duane was able to find honor, glory and rightousness in his memories of battle, but his clear memories straight from the khert after his soul is bound to his corpse do not allow him such comfort and he's horrified by the cruelty and violence he finds in memories he once spun into heroic tales.

** [[TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized The Inak Revolution]] is a bloody explosion of hatred after decades of oppression and genocide, Inak raging out against Crescian civilians who happen to stand between them and the nobles who all but enslaved them. Mere moments before victory, the Inak are betrayed from within by their own general, who mocks and humiliates his entire army as he seizes control of the command hub to upgrade his HumanoidAbomination into a world-destroying warhead. Meanwhile, the Crescians' treasonous Lord General Bell sabotages the Crescians' defense efforts and then goads a bunch of enemy Alderodians into suicide dive-bombing city hall, crushing most of the nobles and (possibly) killing the queen. In short, when war rains blood, it pours ''souls''.

* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'': In "Gettysburg", Nicholas Prentice sent Vince Chance and Andy Larouche to the eve of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. Prentice's hope is to convince Andy that there is no glory in any war so that he will not assassinate the U.S. President at a ceremony marking the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address on November 19, 2013. Andy eventually learns his lesson, though at the cost of his life.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E66Two Two]]", this is the man's opinion on the conflict that devastated the world five years earlier. He no longer has any urge or any reason to fight.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E69ThePassersby The Passersby]]", when Lavinia Godwin tells the sergeant that she plans to shoot the next Union soldier that she sees out of revenge for the death of her husband Jud, he says that he does not want to hear any more talk of butchery or bloodshed due to the thousands of men and boys killed in [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar the war]].
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E76StillValley Still Valley]]", Dauger says that he went to war as if he were playing a children's game but the experience of fighting has shown him the realities of war. His only desire is to remain alive and he even suggests surrendering to the Union troops. Sgt. Joseph Paradine slaps him across the face in response.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E80AQualityOfMercy A Quality of Mercy]]", the battle-hardened marines have been fighting the Japanese for two years, which has made them war-weary. Andrew J. Watkins tells the gung-ho Lt. Katell that they have seen enough dead man to last the rest of their lives and that they aren't going to stand up and cheer at the opportunity to kill more. Sgt. Causarano later says that the platoon consists of "dirty, tired men who have their craw full of this war."

** In "The Last Defender of Camelot", Lancelot was a mercenery-for-hire who traveled the world fighting for UsefulNotes/{{India}} and UsefulNotes/{{China}} (which he still calls Cathay) and in UsefulNotes/TheCrusades. He did so for centuries after Camelot fell but eventually grew weary of all the death and destruction and refused to fight any more. When Myth/{{Merlin}} awakens, Lancelot asks him if even Camelot was worth all of the "blood and widows' tears" that it cost to build.
** In "The Road Less Traveled", the AlternateUniverse version of Jeff [=McDowell=] was traumatized by his experiences during UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar, especially [[AnArmAndALeg losing his legs]]. He tells his counterpart that he regularly has terrible nightmares about the things that he saw there.

** ''The Tale of Iroh'' in the ''[[Recap/AvatarTheLastAirbenderTheTalesOfBaSingSe Tales of Ba Sing Se]]'' episode, which shows the quiet but powerful sadness of a father losing his son to the war. It hammers home the message of the inevitable personal consequences of war, and why it should not be entered into lightly. If there's a way to show this trope responsibly in a kid's show, ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'' is probably the best example that you could possibly find. It even won a Peabody Award for its responsible, yet brutal depiction of war, along with its CharacterDevelopment.

* ''ComicBook/{{Sturmtruppen}}'' is a satiric comic set during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. And once you get past the BlackComedy, you see these soldiers deal with food that goes from barely edible to containing cholera, a [[DrillSergeantNasty sergeant who won't hesitate to torture you for fun]], incompetent officers ruining the work of their more competent colleagues and getting subordinates killed while getting away with it due to {{Nepotism}}, logistic officers embezzling the much needed food and clothes or (in one occasion) burning them to hide the lack of winter clothes... And the soldiers are so desensitised to all of this they ''treat it as normal'', and even joke about the new guy who thought that WarIsGlorious [[AndIMustScream being blown up on a minefield he himself set up and surviving without arms, legs, his five senses and the ability to call the doctors whenever he wets himself]].

* ''LetsPlay/LifeSMP'': Out of all the seasons, the first one, ''3rd Life'', encapsulates it the best. While the season starts out with faction politics as the main source of conflict, the latter half of the season drives home the point how the escalating conflict as a ''war'' has brought nothing but horrors for everyone. By the last two sessions of the season, even the relatively pacifistic players have had to take up arms, former friends have drifted apart and turned against each other as leading figures on opposite sides, most server-members have lost allies and friends (and in at least one case, suffered from bereavement) before being taken out themselves -- oftentimes without mercy, and even the "winning" faction has destroyed their home in the process and ultimately gets a DownerEnding by the nature of the DeadlyGame itself.

--->'''Ironwood''': Do you honestly believe [[ExtranormalInstitute your children]] can win a war?\\
'''Ozpin''': I hope they never have to.

** In the sequel to ''The Salvation War'', ''Pantheocide'', we get "treated" to [[spoiler: the angelic army being hit with a nuclear initiation. The description of the results is chilling.]].

--> '''Gumball:''' That was nowhere near as fun as I thought it would be.
--> '''Darwin:''' I think I've lost my appetite.

* WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender's fanfic ''Fanfic/EmbersVathara'' explores this trope even more than the original cartoon. It's clearly shown what losing their loved ones and constantly fighting for survival does to the characters, especially ChildSoldiers. Zuko has more issuses than just being extremely paranoid, Katara snaps after years of repressing herself emotionally over the loss of her mother and getting PromotionToParent, Aang lives in denial and it's the only thing protecting him from the same fate. The only two well-adjusted characters in the main cast seem to be Toph and Sokka, but considering the theme of this fic, their issues are yet to be shown.

* In the opening scene of ''Series/TheLordOfTheRingsTheRingsOfPower'', glimpses of what is looks like the aftermath of ''the Battle of Unnumbered Tears)'' are shown, with a hill made of helmets and heads, and a traumatized Galadriel next to it. The war against Morgoth was so terrifying that the Elves of Valinor learned on their skin for the first time what "death" means. Galadriel herself was left so scarred by the war, that she spent centuries hunting down any evil left, alienating everyone around her because of her KnightTemplar tendencies.

* Parodied on an ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'' where Steve becomes a ShellShockedVeteran after spending the weekend with a group UsefulNotes/VietnamWar recreationists. The episode is a parody of war films.

-->-- '''UsefulNotes/WilliamTecumsehSherman''' speaking to the graduating class of the Michigan Military Academy on June 19, 1879.[[note]]Maybe. This quote comes from the account of an onlooker named Charles Oliver Brown writing several decades later. The [[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015071498037&view=1up&seq=1 published text]]of the speech contains no such quote.[[/note]][[note]]Sherman did however say something close to this in 1864 when he told the residents of Atlanta [[http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/sherman/sherman-to-burn-atlanta.html why he was going to burn their city]].[[/note]]