Appeal to Force

Simone Weil always was a real straight-shooter.

"Will you never cease prating of laws to us that have swords by our sides?"

— Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus

Most modern societies are built on the principles that justice is blind and no man is above the law. As much as those principles are great, they rely on someone being willing and able to enforce^note keeping in mind that the root of "enforce" is "force" the law. This trope is what happens when there's nobody who can or will.

Maybe someone has a bigger army than the police, maybe they have a remote-control nuke buried underneath a city, maybe they have superpowers that render them nigh-invincible, maybe it's an isolated situation where no greater authority is aware or able to respond. In any case, the strongest one around can do whatever they want because there is nobody who can enact justice upon them. One character might just lean on another temporarily, or they might live their whole life using force wherever they can.

More formally, this is known as the "Argumentum ad Baculum"^note Literally "appeal to the stick" or Appeal to Force, whose logic goes: "Agree with me, or I will hurt you." The fact that this is obviously not valid doesn't stop it from being persuasive. The phrase "talk shit, get hit", while crude, is one of the most common real-life applications of this.

Some political theorists consider this to be the basis of all law and ethics. The idea is that laws are just rules enforced by the threat of violence — they don't have to be good or noble, they just have to threaten you if you break them. Hence why anyone can get away with useless, inefficient, and silly laws if the legislators have the weapons. Needless to say, this argument is rather on the cynical side of the sliding scale, and one of the most popular themes of a totalitarian dystopia, though that doesn't necessarily make it untrue.

Of course, there's a catch. Unless you have the ability to live without sleeping and eating, sooner or later you have to put down the weapon, and somebody just might slit your throat from behind. If your gang of supporters will avenge your death... then you need to keep your gang happy, without risking them gunning for your spot. Also better hope you never get sick, old, or otherwise suffer Badass Decay. Following lines of logic for your security will quickly lead you to re-invent the military aristocracy and other basic sociology concepts, which passes beyond the scope of this article. We also note that while it's easy to force people to do what you want, nature is not so pliable: you can't threaten a hurricane to end, food to appear after a crop failure, etc.

Frequently the next step if Screw the Rules, I Make Them! does not work, and related to Screw the Rules, They're Not Real! in that you're rejecting the need to make a true "argument". Other related tropes include Fisticuff-Provoking Comment, Talk to the Fist, Hobbes Was Right, Mutually Assured Destruction, Shoot the Shaggy Dog, Sexual Extortion, Questionable Consent, and Sword of Damocles.

Supertrope of, among other things:

• 2 + Torture = 5
• The Coup
  • Military Coup
• Klingon Promotion
• Might Makes Right
• An Offer You Can't Refuse
• Screw the Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers!

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Death Note: Light Yagami takes full advantage of the Death Note to kill criminals and those who would interfere with his plans, working as an anonymous God and walking deterrent. Within six years, all wars stop and the global crime rate drops by 70% because everyone's scared of being killed by Kira.
• In Fist of the North Star, society has collapsed after the nuclear war and the only law left is "the strongest does however he pleases". Gangs of bandits roam around the wastelands, raiding and pillaging convoys and villages and killing weak, helpless people.
• Subverted in Get Backers' IL arc: The hacker Makube X tries to threaten the God of Infinity Fortress with a literal nuke (not concerned about the fact that Tokyo would be destroyed in the process) but is defeated by the titular heroes. As Kazuki points out, it never would have worked — no matter how powerful you are, God always holds all the cards.
• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: This is actually the ultimate goal of Kuze's plan. Once the rebels have nukes, the government can't refuse to grant them independence. However, the Government Conspiracy plans to just drop a nuke on the revolt and claim it was the rebels messing up building a homemade atomic bomb.
• My Hero Academia: Muscular took this trope and built his entire life philosophy around it. According to him, if someone has the strength to do something, then that action was correct. He kills dozens of people? He had the right to do so. Some heroes tried to stop him, but only managed to take out his eye before being killed? Trying to stop him was wrong, but destroying his eye was right. And so on.
• In Naruto, Pain wanted the nuke in the form of a powerful jutsu.
• Rebuild World: In the slums where Akira and Sheryl come from, this is virtually the only law. And the Unscrupulous Hero Akira knowing this, is a Slave to PR about trying to be The Dreaded in order to keep himself or Sheryl and her gang from being messed with. Eventually after footage of Akira winning a David Versus Goliath battle spreads, Sheryl takes advantage of it to force all the other slum gangs under her.

Comic Books

• The Superman story Must There Be a Superman? revolves around the titular hero being disturbed by the implication that he has been hindering humanity's social progress by bullying the world. After all, nobody is strong enough to stop him from pounding whatever or whoever he dislikes into paste.
• The Phantom: In the first issue of the 1989 comic book series, a group of bandits posing as British soldiers raid an African village and are summarily crushed by the titular hero. When the bandit chief protests they are authorized by the Queen, the Phantom coldly replies he is the only authority figure that they should be worried about.
  Bandit Chief: We're soldiers, damn you, authorized to seize this land by—
  Phantom: You're pirates, simple thieves. And your authority ends with me.

Comic Strips

• In a Peanuts storyline from 1974, Sally starts carrying around Snoopy when she goes to the playground to drive away bullies. She calls it "Speak softly and carry a beagle." Eventually, she changes it to "speak loudly and carry a beagle" and tries to take over the playground. This works until Snoopy gets distracted by seeing his first sweetheart and ditches her.

Fan Works

• Child of the Storm touches on the trope a few times.
  • One recurring problem noted about the Avengers is that their sheer power, combined with a tendency to do whatever the hell they like regardless of the rules and take out leaders they take a dislike to, ends up creating several of their enemies and spurring several others into action on the grounds that the Avengers will come for them anyway. And in the case of Victor von Doom, who cites this tendency as why he used to send his (much less distinct) Doombots to attack them every now and then to get their measure (now, he just observes), it's depicted as a case of Villain Has a Point.
  • Harry's noted to absorb this tendency as he gets more powerful, doing what he thinks is right rather than what is necessarily legal/by the rules. While he's naturally prone to doing that, there's a distinct element of 'my way or be laminated to the highway' about him. He gets called up for it on more than one occasion.
  • And the chief practitioner of it is Doctor Strange, when he's too short on time or energy to bother manipulating people - and by that, we mean in the sequel he uses the Tesseract to bully the Council Elite of Skyfathers (the pantheons of Earth) into compliance. Also mentioned several times is his challenge to the White Council over the matter of a young Wanda Maximoff, throwing down the gauntlet (which none of them dared pick up). While a number of characters agree that it was good he stepped in to protect her, they question his methods, particularly because they dented the White Council's ability to use this themselves to protect humanity.
• Forum of Thrones:
  • This is implied to be Hobert's backup plan in case he would not manage to secure Raylansfair for House Lowther. The presence of Argella Durrandon and her troops kind of ruined this plan for him, but even without her, it is highly questionable if it would have ever succeeded.
  • Aegon Targaryen has absolutely no legal right to the kingdoms of Westeros. However, what he does have are three adult dragons, capable of raining fire and death down on the woefully underequipped Westerosi armies, establishing him as a major power player only weeks after his landing.
• Gaz's Horrible Halloween of Doom: When Iggins refuses to tell Gaz which house is giving out the rare Mondo Deluxe Poop Candy Bars unless she bows down and admits he's the superior gamer, she neck-lifts him with one hand and threatens to maim him even worse than she did the last time they met. He immediately caves and tells her where it is.
• In My Huntsman Academia, Weiss has to talk Izuku down from overworking and hurting himself when he offers to get a job on top of his already busy schedule and tendency to break his own limbs. She makes him hold to his promise not to strain himself by threatening to hurt him if he doesn't.
• The Night Unfurls: Kyril Sutherland isn't a bully who craves to possess, dominate or impose his values on others, but he is definitely an Anti-Hero since he has no qualms about explicitly or implicitly threatening people with force, either to achieve his objectives or get any belligerents out of the way. The fact that he is a nigh-unkillable individual of dreaded repute helps a lot. Consider this exchange in Chapter 13 of the original:
  Sharkov: Silence! How dare you! I carry a sacred office, and I demand that you apologise for your rudeness!
  Kyril: And I carry a blade.
• In chapter 5 of Savior of Demons, Goku, in trying to understand why Frieza is the way he is, asks him why he couldn't just change the rules — after all, he's so strong, nobody could tell him no, right? Frieza tells him that it would be suicidal, even for him, suggesting that he's not the biggest fish in the galactic pond, at least in terms of influence.
• Star Wars vs Warhammer 40K: When the Imperial colonists that were marooned on Tatooine by Orion's fleet choose to negotiate with Jabba the Hutt for his aid in settling the desert planet, their idea of being diplomatic is to send in a heavily-armed squad of Space Marines to storm Jabba's palace, kill anyone that gets in their way, and force Jabba to comply with their demands at gunpoint. Considering that Jabba in canon is so used to ruling through fear that he refuses to bargain with anyone as an equal, this was actually the right call.
• With This Ring: When Swamp Thing disagrees with the Mayor of Gotham City about whether Abigail Cable should face criminal charges, the mayor's arguments are along the lines of "if you threaten us, we'll add more charges against her," while Swamp Thing's arguments are pretty much, "I am… Still capable of… Levelling this city."
  Neither are behaving in a remotely sensible way, but one is a plant god and the other is a slightly overweight American of Italian-Scottish descent.

Film — Animated

• In Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths the Crime Syndicate, made up of superpowered criminals, is so powerful that the police won't act against them and the President will acquiesce to whatever demands they make of him.

Film — Live-Action

• In Django Unchained, Candie tries to get Django to blow his cover by discussing phrenology, even sawing the skull of his father's favorite slave open while talking on the "inferiority" of black brains in an attempt to disgust Django. It doesn't work, so he moves on to threatening to bash in Broomhilda's skull with a hammer. That works.
• Discussed in Dr. Strangelove. When asked why the Soviets would build the Doomsday Machine, a device that could wipe out all life on Earth, the doc explains that the aforementioned implications would deter any attack on the Soviets by enemy powers. Unfortunately, the Soviets failed to tell the rest of the world that they just plugged in the Doomsday Machine (they wanted to wait and make the announcement Monday), leading to The End of the World as We Know It.
  Dr. Strangelove: My conclusion was that this idea was not a practical deterrent for reasons which at this moment must be all too obvious.
• In Eraser, Kruger tells The Mafia that The Mafiya are buying secretly-developed weapons from a government contractor. They don't care until he mentions that it's happening on their docks. Since it's their turf, they head to the docks but are stopped by heavily-armed guards. The Mafia guys pretend to be members of the dockworkers' union, demanding their cut. The guard captain simply tells them to get lost and indicates his assault rifle. He gets distracted by Kruger making noise and is promptly beaten down by the mob.
  "Don't mess with the union!"
• In I'm Not Rappaport, when Midge tells Nat to go away and get off his bench, Nat asks where it is that it says that it's his, that he doesn't see a plaque. "It says right here," replies Midge, holding up his fists.
  Midge: You read them hands? Study them hands, boy. Them hands were Golden Gloves in the summer of 19 and 28. This is my spot.
• In the 1968 film version of The Lion in Winter, King Philip of France complains to King Henry II of England over some territory the latter has taken from him, asking by what right he holds it. Henry cheerfully replies "It's got my troops all over it — that makes it mine."
• In My Fellow Americans, the fugitive ex-Presidents hitch a ride with some illegal aliens being smuggled across the border. They're discovered by both the INS (in ordinary police helicopters) and the Government Conspiracy (in military attack helicopters) at the same time. There's some Jurisdiction Friction between the two groups, which a conspiracy chopper deftly solves by firing a missile across the INS's nose.
  INS Pilot: Authorization received. Have a nice day.
• The Patriot (2000). When Benjamin Martin tries to reason with Col. Tavington about his brutal conduct by citing the Rules of War, Tavington responds by aiming a pistol at his head and asks him if he would "like a lesson in the rules of war". Then he points it at Martin's children. Tavington's own superior is disgusted with his methods, though he still eventually decides they're necessary to defeat the rebels, and thus save his career (not that it works).
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Throughout the film series, there is one reason why the pirates go crazy with performing Loophole Abuse of the Pirates' Code instead of going "we're pirates, duh, screw the Code!"; and that is Captain Edward Teach, the Keeper of the Code, who will make sure they are very, very dead if they so much as voice that thought.
• Scanners: When the psychic protagonist Cameron Vale infiltrates ConSec's computer system through the telephone lines, Revok's mole within ConSec orders a computer technician to wipe their whole system in an attempt to hurt Cameron. The technician initially refuses to do so because that kind of data loss can only be authorized by the company's board of directors. The mole's response is to shove a gun in the guy's face.
  Mister, this is your authorization.
• There's a scene in Serenity when a guard at the bank the crew is robbing asks for a password. Jayne fires his machine gun.
  "Okay!"
• In Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th, a pizza guy loses his company clothes in a game of strip poker. He hesitates, so Officer Doughy whips out his gun and gives the guy a Death Glare.
• This exchange from Sinbad the Sailor:
  Yusuf: She bears no mark.
  Sinbad: Nonsense! All ships bear identity! It's the law of the sea!
  Yusuf: Law? What law is stronger than strength?
• Star Wars:
  • A New Hope: The Death Star was explicitly built for this purpose, as Grand Moff Tarkin explains: a planet that refuses to submit to the rule of the Empire will be destroyed. Demonstrated when Tarkin threatens to destroy Princess Leia's home planet of Alderaan if she doesn't give him the location of the Rebel base... and then blows it up anyway to prove to every other planet that he can carry the threat out. And (by blowing up Alderaan instead of the remote Dantooine that Leia had claimed was the location of the Rebel base) proving not only that he can blow up a planet, but that he will blow up any planet, even the "important" ones among the Core Worlds. Then it backfires when the Rebels blow up said Death Star, meaning everyone knows that the Empire will blow up any planet, but currently has no way of doing so—a significant PR defeat for the Empire that causes the Rebellion to rapidly gain steam.
  • The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader keeps changing the terms with Lando Calrissian, knowing that with the Empire holding all the cards, he doesn't have to keep his word. This backfires, as Lando decides that if Vader won't keep his word to him, then he's got no reason to hold up his end, either, and so helps Leia and Chewbacca escape.
    Darth Vader: I am altering the deal. Pray that I do not alter it any further.
  • Return of the Jedi shows that thermal detonators (literally nuclear fusion grenades) make for great negotiation tools.
  • The Last Jedi: Kylo Ren and General Hux are arguing about who gets to be Supreme Leader of the First Order with Snoke dead. By which we mean, Kylo Ren says he's Supreme Leader, Hux starts to argue about it, and Ren gives him a Force-Choke to shut him up. (Which makes this Appeal to the Force...)
  • The Rise of Skywalker: Undead Emperor Palpatine repeats the gambit from A New Hope, this time armed with an entire fleet of star destroyers that each carry a planet-killing Wave-Motion Gun.
• A minor example in Twins (1988), when Arnold Schwarzenegger's Martial Pacifist character tries to talk reason to the thug attacking his twin brother. The thug is, to put it mildly, unreceptive.
  Julius: You have no respect for logic.
  Vincent: But he's got an axe!

Literature

• Alexis Carew: If you're a Space Pirate and Alexis has you at gunpoint, do not think that the tiny young woman in New London Royal Navy uniform will bend if you try to negotiate away her ultimatums. She will shoot you in the head without a word and ask your Number Two.
• Forms the basis of society in the Battlegrounds of Citadel, large regions of North America that have had normal government overthrown by a series of superpowered individuals or gangs, only to have the new rulers overthrown in turn, etc…
• The titular empire of Iain M. Banks's series The Culture retains this option. Described as "space hippies with super-nukes", they would prefer that you get along with them in a friendly fashion and (notwithstanding the machinations of Special Circumstances) practice the last word in "live and let live". But their ships can lay waste to planets if they have to, and that's not even the warships.
• Dune:
  • Invoked in the first novel: Duke Leto Atreides's rising popularity in the Landsdraad might have annoyed the Padishah Emperor, but Shaddam IV did not conspire to have House Atreides destroyed until it succeeded in training a small military force - with the potential to become much larger - that rivaled the Emperor's own Elite Army, the Sardaukar, in fighting prowess.
  • Defied on a large scale in the franchise overall. Not only will use of atomics on living targets bring the wrath of the rest of the universe down on you but the most (directly) powerful faction turns out to have no military to speak of at all; guaranteed trade and economic growth is far more important than a few million lives here or there. Further, most of the players recognize that politics and power are actually a complicated web of balances and counterbalances, and blatant use of raw power rarely produces the results you intended. The Bene Gesserit especially understand this, and Leto II took it further. In the Dune world, a direct-approach power player is almost surely being manipulated by someone else toward some end he doesn't even imagine. The Beast Rabban, for example.
  • Less so in the prequels (written by Herbert's son and Kevin J. Anderson), as shown by the rabid House Moritani that has no qualms about attacking anyone who so much as looks at them sideways, completely ignoring Landsraad rules (including Kanli). How does The Emperor respond (especially since their actions were openly endangering the Imperium)? By shaking his finger at them. It's no wonder that they get bolder and bolder. By the end, the ruler of the House is openly threatening the Emperor with a nuke. Luckily, his Dragon turned out not to approve of his boss's methods.
  • Paul Atreides is another exception, though with somewhat more finesse than Rabban; he ultimately takes over Arrakis using an army of fanatical soldiers, a tactical application of atomic weapons, and in the end a Duel to the Death. After becoming Emperor, Paul wages a religious war of conquest that results in dozens of planets being sterilized for refusing to bow down to him as Emperor. Paul didn't want to do this, but his core following, made up exclusively of religious fanatics, wouldn't have had it any other way. Though notably he only gets away with this because he has sole control over the spice trade, which prevents the Spacing Guild from moving any troops but his, preventing the great houses from ganging up on his smaller but better army.
• Encyclopedia Brown: The canonical reason why none of the bullies and petty criminals whom Encyclopedia defeats retaliate against him is because his friend Sally beats up anyone who tries.
• Isaac Asimov's "The Encyclopedists": When the Board of Trustees attempts to claim complete independence from local politics, Anacreon points out that the Empire isn't around to enforce said independence, implying that they are free to conquer Terminus with their more powerful military. Mayor Hardin is the only one who tries to find a solution to the Kingdom of Anacreon trying to annex the Foundation.
• Laconia from The Expanse was founded on the belief that humanity's expansion among the stars can only end in ruin if it won't be guided by one—and only one—man, that man of course being their High Consul Winston Duarte. It's ridiculous to think that just one person could keep control over every human colony scattered over 1300 star systems, but try to argue about that when Duarte has control over ancient shipyards able to construct dreadnoughts, just one of which is capable of eliminating whatever it points at in a blink of an eye and able to absorb more firepower than 2 powerful fleets combined can dish out and come out without a scratch. Except for a few damaged sensors, which eventually help the underground destroy the ship and prove that fear of swift retribution was the only thing keeping hundreds of comm channels across the Solar System from speaking out against Laconia and their irresponsible actions against aliens known for eradicating a civilisation far more advanced than humanity.
• The Faraway Paladin: In the backstory, Will's adoptive family members Blood, Mary, and Gus made a Deal with the Devil: be turned into undead so they could guard the demon lord's prison forever, but become the servants of the god of undeath, Stagnate, if their attachment to this duty ever waned. They became attached to Will and so the Echo (avatar) of Stagnate came for them... only for Gus to spectacularly blow the avatar away with a Fantastic Nuke, on the grounds that a deal made out of desperation didn't count. It doesn't work—Stagnate had a second Echo prepared just in case—but it was worth a try.
• In Going Postal, Archchancellor Ridcully mentions that the Unseen University has a whole pond full of frogs that were once people who tried to sue the University.
• In I, Claudius, Caligula summons soldiers to hear him give a speech — including soldiers who had disobeyed him, ready to have them executed, telling that particular group to not worry about weapons or armor. His uncle, Claudius, manages to drop a hint to one captain. Caligula quickly changes his tune when those guards let it be seen that they are carrying their swords underneath their tunics.
• In Robert Howard's Kull stories, Kull at one point announces that he will rule by virtue of his battle axe unless some noble wishes to challenge him to combat. There was a touch of wish fulfillment in that story.
• Leviathan (Thomas Hobbes), is one of the works best known for using this theory to explain Real Life. Hobbes argued that people either had the choice of living in a "state of nature" (i.e. lawless chaos) or giving up some rights in return for security from a state powerful enough to enforce laws, with the latter being the better option. Along with forming social contract theory, this was innovative by stating in no uncertain terms that the state's authority rests ultimately on force, rather than divine right, justice, or any other ideal political theorists usually appealed to. Those might be well and fine but amounted to very little without force to back them up.
• Thrasymachus, one of the characters in Plato's The Republic takes it a step further-he doesn't just say that law is the will of the strongest, he actually defines justice in those terms.
• Captain Vimes tries this in Night Watch, but it backfires. When asked who his authority is, he says it's "Mr. Burliegh and Mr. Stronginthearm!", meaning the manufacturers of his crossbow. But he's gone back in time, and they haven't started making crossbows yet...cue *Click* Hello.
• Nineteen Eighty-Four introduced and popularized the concept of 2 + Torture = 5 in order to demonstrate how totalitarian dystopias are dependent on this trope. The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Party, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Party says of such and such an event, "It never happened" — well, it never happened, even though the facts say so in your face. If he says that two and two are five — well, two and two are five. Those who fail to accept the self-contradictory lies of the Party are sent off to Room 101.
• This trope is the reason that Abul Sabah's theocracy is able to take over the world in Nuclear Holocaust Never Again - his country had a nuke, and none of the peaceful democratic countries did, so his government nuked every capital city except their own, causing billions of deaths and leaving the democracies with no choice but to accept Sabah as their overlord.
• The famous Melian Dialog from The Peloppenesian War by Thucydides. Athens gives Melos the threat: submit or be destroyed. The Melians resort to several arguments. including moral ones; the Athenians are unmoved: "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: In volume 2 (episode 11 of the anime), Joseph Albright refuses to accept his defeat by Oliver in a fair Wizard Duel,^note He has a Freudian Excuse: the last time he lost to someone, at chess, his father tortured him for most of a day and murdered his opponent's entire family. and conjures up a swarm of giant bees to force everyone present to let him wipe the defeat from their memories so he can tell people he won. The protagonists are having none of that, and come up with a plan to destroy the bees so that Nanao can take Albright down in single combat.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events jokes on this when discussing the Gordian Knot.
  "Besides invading other people’s countries and forcing them to do whatever he said, Alexander the Great was famous for something called the Gordian Knot. The Gordian Knot was a fancy knot tied in a piece of rope by a king named Gordius. Gordius said that if Alexander could untie it, he could rule the whole kingdom. But Alexander, who was too busy conquering places to learn how to untie knots, simply drew his sword and cut the Gordian Knot in two. This was cheating, of course, but Alexander had too many soldiers for Gordius to argue, and soon everybody in Gordium had to bow down to You-Know-Who the Great."
• Slow Life in Another World (I Wish!): Slave trader Yaschis arranges a competition between protagonist Itsuki and mob-connected local fop Dardarill: whomever first comes up with the purchase price for the beautiful female slave Wendy gets to keep her. Itsuki wins, and Dardarill calls in his goons to try and settle the matter by force.^note In his defense, Yaschis clearly favored Itsuki pretty heavily, even letting him cover part of the price by selling him the sales rights to a bullet vibrator he invented. Fortunately, Itsuki anticipated this and brought backup of his own: his battle slaves Aina, Solte, and Shiro.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Stannis Baratheon insists that he should be king because he's the eldest brother. Younger brother Renly points out that he has the largest army, claiming he's just doing the same thing as their eldest brother Robert (neglecting to mention that Robert was part of a coalition acting against a tyrant, Renly is just a power-hungry jerk). Meanwhile, the Queen Regent Cersei Lannister is furious that her father is refusing to withdraw his forces from Harrenhal (where they're strategically placed to threaten any force that moves against the Lannisters) to directly defend the capital from the Baratheons. Her brother Tyrion points out that their father can afford to ignore her royal commands, as he has a very large army.
  • Ever since the divine right of kings was initially challenged 15 years previously when a coalition of lords overthrew The Caligula and installed a new regime, the idea has germinated that kingship is just defined by a combination of force of arms and political ratification. When a second civil war breaks out, more and more people start to realize that all you need to be able to do is convince enough other people that you're able to win the throne, and you'll have a decent chance of doing so (meanwhile, the pre-rebellion dynasty only held the throne in the first place because they used to have dragons and burned anyone who didn't give fealty to them).
  • The trope comes up quite prominently in the history of Westeros as well. Aegon Targaryen the First, who invaded the continent and became the first king of the Seven Kingdoms, might not have had a very large army, but he did have three very large dragons. Several incinerated armies and castles later, Aegon and his sisters were the unopposed rulers of most of Westeros.
  • Aegon's younger son Maegor the Cruel invoked this. After his brother Aenys I died Maegor claimed the throne. When a Grand Maester protested that his brother's children came before him, Maegor decapitated the Grand Maester.
  • Also lampshaded when two members of the royal family are accused of adultery. Mace Tyrell (who's not one of the brightest men in the kingdom) is nevertheless smart enough to keep his entire army on hand during his daughter's trial. She's treated a lot more gently than her rival, Cersei, who was foolish enough to send her army and (plus the more skilled members of her bodyguard) off on a wild goose chase to other parts of the kingdom.
  • Invoked quite openly by Balon Greyjoy. When asked by what right he claims rulership of the North, he responds, "By right of conquest." This is part of his culture, what the Ironborn call "paying the iron price." It's regarded as more honorable to take something by force than it is to purchase it. (This was actually a principle of international ''law'' until recent times.)
• In Snow Crash, Raven's habit of motorcycling around with a stolen Russian warhead rigged to explode when he dies ensures that everyone "tries to make him feel welcome."
• Star Wars Legends
  • The Empire's continual appeal to force typically just engendered more resistance to their rule. As stated by Leia in A New Hope: "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
  • In The Han Solo Trilogy, one of Han's Space Cadet Academy classmates defected to the Rebellion after the Empire put down a peaceful protest by incinerating it with a starship's engines.
  • X-Wing Series:
    • In The Bacta War, Imperial Intelligence Director Ysanne Isard's increasingly brutal tactics after the New Republic captures Coruscant from her gradually alienate the very allies she needs to maintain her grip on power. One remarks that a soldier working for Isard had just two outcomes: death by the Rebels, or death by her.
    • Played for Laughs at the end of Solo Command. Gara Petothel, an ex-Imperial Intelligence operative who was a member of Wraith Squadron under her "Lara Notsil" pseudonym, sends Han Solo's task force a message for her Love Interest Myn Donos under her new pseudonym "Kirney Slane". Han orders the message forwarded to Myn and not reported to New Republic Intelligence (Petothel is wanted for espionage but pulled a Heel–Face Turn and helped them beat Warlord Zsinj), on the grounds that this is "somebody named Kirney Slane" and not Petothel. The communications officer protests and Han offers to have Chewbacca come up to the bridge and explain things to him.
  • Called out directly by a disguised Grand Admiral Thrawn in Tatooine Ghost. As an object lesson to an overly zealous stormtrooper commander who had tortured civilians, Thrawn punches him out and then asks him if that made him like Thrawn better. He then states that the new doctrine of the Imperial Remnant isn't ever-increasing brutality, it's Pragmatic Villainy. As shown in The Thrawn Trilogy (written earlier but set about a year later), while Thrawn is willing to be a Bad Boss who executes subordinates for failure and even depopulate entire planets if he finds it necessary, he does carefully weigh the practical pros and cons beforehand: the subordinate he killed on-screen had failed due to incompetence and then tried to pin it on his supervising officer (and in a Call-Back to this incident, he later promotes another man for being creative when faced with a similar problem, even though the attempt failed).
• In Victoria's generally post-apocalyptic, Scavenger World America, Azania exerts a powerful appeal far beyond its borders: its functioning modern economy, medicine, and advanced technology are attractive to many, and so are its women-friendly policies and its tolerance of LGBT people and other minorities. The country's chief enemy, the reactionary, fundamentalist-dominated, anti-technological, and moderately-to-heavily misogynist Northern Confederation, realize that its ideas will be more appealing to many than their own, and that Azania, even without actively interfering in their politics, functions as an example and beacon of hope to their dissidents. So rather than debating politics, they contrive an excuse for war, intending to crush their ideological opponents with military force and thus silence all dissent. (In case you're wondering, the Confederates are supposed to be the heroes.)
• This is largely the basis around which the Aes Sedai from The Wheel of Time organize their hierarchy: with a few notable exceptions, more powerful channelers always outrank less powerful ones, wisdom and experience be damned.
• In the Web Serial Novel Worm the main character (Skitter) often threatens people with horrible fates if they don't do what she says due to her power to control bugs, including some unpleasantly venomous spiders.
• Done by Granny Weatherwax in Wyrd Sisters when she threatens to boil a demon alive unless it tells them what the hell is going on. The demon (who had spent their last questions being a Literal Genie and intentionally answering in as obtuse a manner as possible) weakly protests this is against the rules but quickly relents when it's made very clear Granny isn't joking.

Live-Action TV

• In one episode of Andromeda, Hunt finds an old High Guard station controlled by teenagers. After he enters his command code, the hangar unlocks, and he finds dozens of slipfighters, each of which has armed with a Nova bomb. Tyr looks at them and tells Hunt that he could have his Commonwealth back... today. Hunt, though, claims that it wouldn't be a true Commonwealth, merely a dictatorship held together by the threat of annihilation. Though, having been Taught by Experience in the pilot, he does keep one of the bombs, just in case, and later uses it against the Magog worldship.
• Blake's 7: While the Terran Federation uses all the tools of a soul-crushing sci-fi dystopia like brainwashing, torture, censorship, and propaganda, the High Council is not above thinking that Murder Is the Best Solution.
  • When Albian legally demanded their independence, the Federation hid a Doomsday Device on the planet and threatened to detonate it if they rebelled.
  • When Saurian Major rebelled, half the population were deported and La Résistance wiped out with biological weapons.
  • Once Agravo had been mined of all useful minerals, the Federation evacuated the skilled personnel and left the others to die a slow death when their resources ran out. As it turns out an industrial accident kills them first.
  • Gauda Prime was designated an agricultural world, but when it was discovered to have mineral wealth on the land that the Federation settlers legally owned, the High Council declared it an Open Planet where all law & order was suspended. Anyone who refused to leave could then be legally murdered.
  • When Servalan herself becomes President, she commits mass genocide just to blackmail the Auronar into cloning children for her. And they say Babies Make Everything Better...
• Near the end of Farscape's final story arc, John Crichton casually strolls into a high-level diplomatic meeting between the Scarran Emperor and Peacekeeper Commandant Grayza (as well as their lackeys among the Charrids and Kalish) on the Scarran capital moon, Katratzi. At first not killing him simply because they're stunned he arrived, the Scarran Emperor asks why they should let him live another minute. Crichton then pulls open his coat to reveal that he is carrying a homemade nuclear bomb, which forces the Emperor to call off his guards. Crichton then starts merrily strolling around the room while detailing the various deadman switches that the bomb operates on...then starts walking around on tables as he explains that the reason he has come is that he can't keep running forever, so he's settled for a new plan in which he will sell wormhole technology to the highest bidder among the assembled galactic political superpowers: in exchange for the bidder's protection he'll basically sell them galactic dominance. Crichton was, of course, lying. His real plan was to gain access to the Katratzi to rescue Aeryn from Scarran custody, and then, to plant the nuclear bomb in a vital area of the base and "blow up the Death Star".
• Firefly:
  • Two examples from "The Train Job":
    • As Jayne Cobb would say: "You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you with until you know who's in ruttin' command here!" Turns out to be an example of a Defied Trope: Simon knew he'd try and do this so he pulled a "Screw the Rules, I have tranqs!" gambit by injecting Jayne with an anaesthetic while patching him up from an injury. Jayne's bid for power occurred just as the anaesthetic started to kick in, resulting in him falling asleep before he could complete his take-over. The crew was extremely relieved by Simon's foresight.
    • Mal also pulls this at the end of the second episode while dealing with Adelai Niska's dragon Crow. Mal gives him a big speech about how they're cancelling the job but returning Niska's money. Crow gives Mal a big speech right back about how he's going to hunt down and torture Mal to death. Mal simply says, "Darn," and kicks him into the ship's engine intake. Mal then grabs the next goon and starts to give him the same speech; the mook very quickly agrees to Mal's terms before he can finish the spiel's first sentence.
  • "Safe" has this with the “we’ll blow a new crater in this here moon” scene, but they’re banking on the settlers not realizing the ship has no guns. (That said, they do have Jayne and he has big guns and probably grenades.)
• A French Village: A lot of times German officials simply ignore French objections when they break the Armistice's terms, since there's nothing that can do about it as the Germans have the power.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Game of Thrones:
    • A recurring theme. Aegon the Conqueror didn't seize the kingdoms because he had any claim or right, he seized them because he could. Power may come from knowledge, the gods, or be derived from the law, but ultimately a swordsman decides whether the king, the priest, or the rich man live or die.
      Lord Tywin: You really think a crown gives you power?
      Tyrion: No, I think armies give you power.
    • Though ironically given his line about armies to Tywin, Tyrion later realizes that, despite losing nearly every battle he fought against the Stark-Tully alliance, Tywin still ultimately defeated them in the war by playing a better political game.
    • Renly decides to make a claim for the throne based on right of conquest like his big brother Robert. By law, his claim is weaker than Stannis', but Renly's charisma provides him with a bigger support, which in turn is used to press said claim.
      Renly: Look across those fields, brother. Can you see all those banners?
      Stannis: You think a few bolts of cloth will make you king?
      Renly: No. The men holding those bolts of cloth will make me king.
    • Defied by Tommen when he balks at hacking his way through the Faith Militant just to talk to the High Sparrow.
    • Ramsay Bolton casually stabs his father Roose to death mid-conversation, then tells the House maester to announce that Roose was "killed by our enemies".
      Maester: (hesitates)
      Ramsay: How did my father die?
      Maester: Killed by our enemies.
  • House of the Dragon: It is repeatedly mentioned that what makes the Targaryens exceptional (and in charge) is that they have dragons, something no other house (save the Velaryons, and later the Targaryens-Hightowers) can boast. Rhaenyra and Viserys note that without the dragons, House Targaryen becomes much more vulnerable, which is exactly what ends up happening.
• I, Claudius: In Episode 10, "Fool's Luck", Claudius explains to a delegation from the Senate that he has been put on the throne by the Praetorian Guard and has no more choice in the matter than the Senate does. To drive this home, the scene is book-ended by the Praetorians and Caligula's personal guard marching in and out of the room in full panoply, something Claudius never ordered.
• Miss Scarlet & The Duke: Played for laughs in one episode. Eliza tries to get information out of the clerk at a messenger service but is stonewalled when he refuses to violate client confidentiality. Then she sees her Friend on the Force William "Duke" Wellington outside, who happens to be a very large Scotsman. William proceeds to demand at the top of his lungs that the clerk "bring me that message now, or I will break every bone in your body, and then arrest you for assaulting a police officer!" The clerk is so frightened he breaks down crying, embarrassing Duke.
  Duke: (to Eliza) What?
  Eliza: He's little more than a child.
  Duke: You told me to frighten him!
• The Outer Limits (1995):
  • The episode "Final Exam" featured a disgruntled student who invents a cold fusion bomb and threatens to destroy a major city unless his demands are met, including have certain people he dislikes executed in view of him. They do execute one person.
  • In the episode "Final Appeal", a time traveler uses a similar bomb to threaten the US Government of 20 Minutes in the Future, where the world has banned complex technology, to keep the ban, while another time traveler argues that it should be lifted. After he allows himself to be sent to the past without his Time Machine, his device activates and explodes, destroying Washington, D.C.
• Star Trek:
  • Worf, as security chief, is quite famous for doing this continually. A classic example is in the very first episode, where Q appears on the viewscreen, causing Worf to leap the tactical console and nearly fire his phaser right at his image. Lampshaded by:
    Picard: Lieutenant, do you intend to blast a hole through the viewer?
  • In the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Q puts the Enterprise crew on trial, the accusation being that humanity was once and still might be a "dangerously savage child-race". Picard says they will successfully defend themselves against the accusation if the trial is fair. Q replies that the trial will be absolutely equitable, and then promptly orders that Picard and crew be summarily executed if they enter any other plea besides guilty. Subverted in that Q is just trolling them: he actually does want them to pass the test, but he can't pass up an opportunity to mess with their heads for his own amusement while they do it.
  • In "The Ensigns of Command" Data uses this to prove a point while attempting to convince a group of colonists that they must evacuate their world before the Sheliak, a rigid and xenophobic race who regardless have an entirely legal claim to it, arrive and "remove them" with lethal force. The colony's leader refuses to budge, preferring to rally his people to fight, and when Data persists in opposing him, he attacks the android and disables him. After he's repaired, Data decides that the leader has indeed proven that actions speak louder than words, so he announces that he intends to destroy the aqueduct that the colony is built around, stuns all the guards that the colonists place around it without them even being able to get a shot off, then destroys the aqueduct with one shot from his hand phaser, to prove that if one android with a sidearm can do all that, the Sheliak (who are coming in the thousands in armed spaceships) will wipe the colonists out from orbit without even noticing their defiance. The colonists give in and begin the evacuation.
  • The Star Trek: Voyager episode "Learning Curve" has Tuvok put some of the ex-Maquis crew members through Starfleet boot camp aboard ship after some discipline problems. Kenneth Dalby, the guy who started the whole thing, resists and says he'd rather do things "the Maquis way." Chakotay promptly lays him out with a left cross and tells him "the Maquis way" is Dalby and the others obeying Tuvok or Chakotay will kick their asses.

Music

• Denis Leary's song "I'm an Asshole" features a spoken rant that's all about this:
  You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna get myself a 1967 Cadillac Eldorado convertible, hot pink, with whale skin hubcaps and all leather cow interior and big brown baby seal eyes for headlights. Yeah! And I'm gonna drive around in that baby at 115 miles an hour, getting 1 mile per gallon, sucking down quarter-pounder cheeseburgers from McDonald's in the old-fashioned non-biodegradable Styrofoam containers! And when I'm done suckin' down those grease ball burgers I'm gonna wipe my mouth on the American flag and then toss the Styrofoam containers right out the side, and there ain't a God-damned thing anybody can do about it. You know why? Because we got the bombs, that's why! Two words — nuclear fucking weapons, OK? Russia, Germany, Romania — they can have all the democracy they want. They can have a big democracy cakewalk right through the middle of Tiananmen Square and it won't make a lick of difference, because we've got the bombs, OK?

Religion & Myth

• Every religion is ultimately this, with God as the ultimate Appeal To Force. Even for religions without any central God figure, they all ultimately warn that living a sinful life eventually leads to a sucky afterlife, whether hell (or analogues) or having to do it all over again.
  Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

  Matthew 10:28

Tabletop Games

• Ars Magica: The Order of Hermes includes several such provisions in its Code. Justified in that magi, especially in the Order's early days, tend to be suspicious of outside authorities and didn't want to be barred from pursuing their own grievances.
  • Wizard's War is a formalized framework for magi to attack each other, even to the death, so long as the War lasts only one lunar month and the aggressor provides a further month's notice. Some magi have used it to exact justice that they couldn't get under the Code, but it can be waged for any reason or none — however, the threat of an enemy's entire Master-Apprentice Chain and other allies joining the War ensures it's never done lightly.
  • If a magus is prosecuted for a violation of the Code of Hermes, declares Wizard's War on the prosecuting principle, and kills the magus in question, the charge is dismissed. This is even true if the prosecuting principle is a Quaesitor (the judges and lawyers of the Order), though only the mightiest magi can expect to triumph in this.
  • Magi can also resolve disputes through the formal, non-lethal Wizard Duel certamen. Outcomes are legally binding and refusal of a duel is equivalent to a forfeit, unless it would violate the refuser's rights (which is a difference from Wizard's War).
• BattleTech:
  • This is a valid legal argument in the Clan justice system. As they are a Proud Warrior Race, any decision not already settled through battle or a Trial can be nullified through a Trial of Refusal, in which the defender essentially fights their accuser(s) for the right to undo the decision. Because the Clans aren't complete idiots, however, they built the system so that the odds you face are equal to the degree by which you were found guilty: A "he said, she said" situation Decided by One Vote boils down to a 1 vs 1 duel between accuser and defender. A 16-person council finding one side unanimously guilty, meanwhile, means 17-to-1 odds as the defendant has to put down the prosecutor and everyone else who agreed with them. Though a victory with 17-to-1 odds isn't very impressive so there's usually a considerable amount voluntary reduction in force before the fight actually starts.
  • Outside of the Clans, "bigger army diplomacy" has been generally accepted as the way things are, even in the Inner Sphere. The formation of the Ares Conventions are noted In-Universe to have formalized warfare as a valid form of conflict resolution, by laying down clear rules for what is and isn't acceptable during a conflict, and caused centuries of open warfare until the formation of Star League (who would go on to use the same argument to 'convince' the Periphery realms to join it).
• In Dungeons & Dragons, the players themselves can let their characters' power go to their heads and decide that the laws of the land don't apply to them since they can kill any number of guards, paladins, or anything else short of (or in some cases, far exceeding) gods sent to stop them. And, of course, the DM can always say Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies.
• In Infernum, attaining new positions in the hierarchy of a House requires increasingly-complicated mechanics to simulate the politicking involved in taking control of an empty dominion. This trend abruptly reverses itself when you reach the level of Head of House, which has only one requirement: "Last Demon Standing."
• Paranoia: Depending on the edition, The Computer is either a mad dictator, hopelessly senile, or a well-intentioned maintenance system that's been reprogrammed one time too many. Regardless, the entire society it maintains accepts its Insane Troll Logic and obeys immediately because anyone who disagrees with it (or even just seems unhappy with its pronouncements) is shot. Or worse.
  • Some editions of Paranoia include quotes from The Computer in the margins or to take up white space. One recurring quote is "Have a Nice Day or I'll Kill You."
  • In the adventure "Hunger," The Computer decides to replicate some of the worst falsehoods of Soviet and Maoist science and apply them to food production. As the people in charge of one such facility, the Troubleshooters watch as the delicate algae ecosystem dies and food production drops to zero. Reporting this, of course, is disagreeing with The Computer, making you a traitor. The adventure is intended to end with a Complex-wide famine with only one solution.
  • In the adventure "Whitewash," a low-security Infrared (black) hallway is accidentally painted over with high-security Ultraviolet (white) colors, leaving an entire sector's labor force unable to get to work. So many people report the situation that The Computer decides they must all be part of a massive conspiracy and executes them. A literal case of "Say that white is black, or I'll kill you."
• Planescape:
  • This is how the Lady of Pain is the Shadow Dictator of Sigil. Simply put, nobody has enough power to dethrone her, and most are afraid to try, given what tends to happen to those who defy her. (Not that there haven't been any who have tried, given how valuable Sigil is, but she's crushed all challenges thus far).
  • Lothar is a powerful, eccentric, and immortal Necromancer who lives in Sigil and pretty much ignores the existence of the city's civil service and mortal authorities through this trope. Since the only being in Sigil who could regulate his activities is The Lady, and Lothar doesn't do anything that warrants her attention (he collects the souls of the already dead, which does not involve killing people or disrupting the order of the city), the rest of Sigil leaves him alone.
  • Demon Lords rule layers of the Abyss this way. Demons are way too chaotic to have any proper government, so the strongest demons are the rulers, plain and simple. Guys like Demogorgon and Orcus are constantly fighting bloody wars in an effort to gain more territory and followers.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • One of the dangers of authorizing an inquisitor's use of Exterminatus. The command is used when a world is found irreversibly corrupt, damaged, or infested, and is only used as a last measure, however there might be the occasional hiccup, and an entire world lost. Although Inquisitors are just as susceptible to being on the receiving end: they don't have a nuke, merely the authority to procure one. To perform Exterminatus, they need either the Space Marines — who are autonomous and deadly enough to reverse the trope against the Inquisitor with a minimum of hassle — or the Imperial Navy — who are commanded and equipped by organizations powerful enough that any individual Inquisitor isn't going to take them on. Only the most respected Lord Inquisitors have private warships capable of performing Exterminatus, and, let's face it, they won't make bad calls like that given the penalty for failure in the Imperium.
  • Used heroically after the First War for Armageddon, following which the Inquisition and the Grey Knights decided that surviving residents of the planet would be sterilized and worked to death in concentration camps. The Space Wolves leapt to the civilians' defense, making their objections to the intended genocide known rather violently and effectively (in numbers alone they outman any other Space Marine chapter, especially the Grey Knights, having never spun off successor chapters). There's still bad blood between the various organizations over the whole mess.

Video Games

• In an Easter Egg in BioShock 2, you come across three splicers talking about what happened to the protagonist of the first game and two of them suggest that he took either the good ending or the bad ending. The one who states that Jack took the bad ending that "heck, and if anyone messes with him, he's got a nuke".
• AI leaders like to invoke this trope in Civilization. "Our words are backed with NUCLEAR WEAPONS!" is heard from anyone with the technology.
  • In Civilization V, once you get nukes, any other leader whom you talk to will have "AFRAID" as the status regardless of his or her disposition towards you. This is especially useful if you build nukes before everyone else and then manage to push a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty through the UN, leaving you the only one with them.
  • Civs in Civilization V will also be "afraid" if your army wildly outguns theirs (at least twice its strength) and is nearby. City-states can be intimidated in much the same way to give up money or units.
  • The Autocracy ideology in Civ V has a tenet that takes City-State intimidation a step further — with Gunboat Diplomacy, you gain a hefty amount of influence each turn with City-States you could successfully demand tribute from. It's amazing how quickly a city is willing to ally with you when you've got a few divisions parked outside their front door.
• Late-game meetings with the Dark assembly in the Disgaea games can seem a bit this way, especially if you're using New Game+. If your proposal gets denied, your insanely overpowered team can beat the senators into submission without breaking a sweat.
  • And if you have beaten Baal, they recognize that you have a nuke and don't even dare to object proposals made by a main character.
• Crops up on occasion in the Fallout series. The central conflict In Fallout 3 is between the Brotherhood of Steel and the Enclave, both of whom rely on superior technology and firepower to claim dominion over the Capital Wasteland.
  • The Courier in Fallout: New Vegas has a lot of dialogue options where they convince an NPC to take their side of a particular argument by threatening them with violence and/or bodily harm. The Terrifying Presence perk takes the trope to the extreme; the perk gives special dialogue options where the Courier will make a threat that scares or provokes the NPC to attack, ending the conversation with an immediate chance to make good on the threat.
• Carried over into Galactic Civilizations, except instead of nukes (which are kind of weak compared to orbital railgun strikes and doom rays) you have "Terror Stars" (star destroyers in the most literal sense) or fleets of dreadnoughts with black hole guns.
• Present twice times in the backstory of the Homeworld series. The first time is when in the ancient times the Galactic Council had been called to settle a territorial dispute between Hiigara and the Taiidan Empire and favored the latter: when the Hiigaran found the Second Great Hyperspace Core (that allowed the ship with it to just go everywhere in the galaxy bringing a fleet with it) they just laid waste to the Taiidan homeworld, with the implied threat that they could do it to anyone. This backfired horribly, as the Galactic Council set on them the Bentusi, who had the First Great Hyperspace Core and enough firepower to destroy their fleet. Then, with the Hiigaran utterly defeated and the Bentusi traumatized by the battle into disarming themselves, the Taiidan Empire was left as the single strongest military power of the galaxy: the Council ordered to leave the now harmless Hiigarans alone, but the Taiidan continued burning Hiigaran worlds until the surviving Hiigarans accepted to cede their homeworld and leave in exile on a desert planet.
• In Knights of the Old Republic you have to pose as a Sith wannabe trying to get into the Sith Academy on Korriban. You'll come across a Sith student having some 'fun' with a couple of hopefuls. One of the ways to get him to back off is to simply threaten to kill him. He'll even be rather impressed with you and be rather friendly for the short time you know him. He will still try and kill you, but that's just how the Sith work, sorry chum.
• Played for laughs in Mass Effect 2. A woman on Omega is trying to get back into a district that is under quarantine due to a plague killing non-humans. When Shepard shows up, the guard lets them right through and answers the woman's complaint with, "You don't have a grenade launcher, lady. Get lost."
• Metal Gear:
  • Done in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater's secret theater "The Ultimate Weapon." Naked Snake "cheats" playing rock-paper-scissors with The Boss by using a bizarre combination of all three gestures. So she trumps him by nuking him with a Davy Crocket at point-blank range.
  • This is also pretty much the grand scheme in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, which involves Skull Face planning create and handing out nuclear weapons that he still has the off-switch for all of them, infecting the world with parasites that will kill anyone who tries to speak English, allowing him to use Metal Gears and nukes to replace it as a global language. Resulting in his own vision of world peace.
• In Overlord you could be a nice evil dictator and let the peasants worship you in peace or you could randomly kill them and ransack their homes because you know they can't offer any real resistance.
• In Sid Meier's Pirates!, you aren't allowed to enter a port if you have bad relations with either the port or its controlling power. You could sneak in, but it's usually easier to open the port at gunpoint.
  • In the PC and console versions, the player can land troops and play a turn-based strategy game against the defenders. In the mobile version, this has been replaced with a mini-game where you shell the city defenses.
• In Spore, once you reach the Space Age you can cause a planet-wide extinction with nothing bad happening to you. You can even use this as a strategy when trying to take planets.
• Deconstructed in classic Star Wars fashion in Star Wars: The Old Republic. While negotiating peace terms with the Galactic Republic, the Sith Empire launched a surprise attack on Coruscant and sacked much of the city, essentially holding the entire planet hostage to improve their bargaining position. Five years later, the war starts up again, largely at the Empire's instigation... except where the Republic has spent the intervening time building its forces to avenge the humiliation of the previous war, the Empire, which is much smaller to begin with, has spent it mostly consumed by internal conflicts between various groups of Sith when they didn't have the threat of the Jedi to keep them off their Chronic Backstabbing Disorder. By the Rise of the Hutt Cartel expansion, the Republic is clearly winning.
• Stellaris:
  • One opinion modifier is 'Relative Power of Empires', which increases the more powerful your forces are compared to the other. Granted, it's unlikely to succeed by itself, but if you can a get positive enough modifier, that means your fleet is also strong enough to just force them to submit in a more direct manner.
  • Many war goals don't involve conquest or genocide, but instead force the loser to concede in political matters, such as joining a hegemony or imposing an ethic on a rival.
  • This is the creed of Barbaric Despoilers: What's yours is mine, if I can take it.
  • Having a Colossus allows an empire to declare Total War without limits, and likewise allows other empires to do the same to it; a state of affairs normally limited to Fanatical Purifiers, Determined Exterminators, Devouring Swarms and Driven Assimilators. In other words, the Colossus represents the breakdown of galactic "international law" in favor of this trope.
• One of the methods of control in the Tropico series. Provided you have a large enough army you can remain in control of your Banana Republic pretty much indefinitely. You can also invoke this in #4; building a nuclear program will prevent the USA and USSR from invading your island.
• Leo Caruso, one of two playable characters in A Way Out, has dialogue/action options that involve violence, be it through weapons or physical means, and/or threatening someone. Justified, as he grew up alone with no parental guidance or education, and ended up turning to crime.

Web Animation

• RWBY: By holding two council seats, General James Ironwood commands both the Atlesian military and huntsmen, giving him disproportionate power within his kingdom and facilitating his influence of foreign councils, such as in Volume 2 where his reports convince the Vale Council to transfer Vytal Festival security from Professor Ozpin to himself. After Beacon's fall, his increasing authoritarianism sidelines his fellow councillors, leaving resistance to Robyn Hill's Happy Huntresses until the heroes arrive in Volume 7. Once he succumbs to paranoia, his control of Atlas becomes absolute, ruthlessly targeting opposition, shooting allies for disagreeing with him, and coercing both villains and heroes alike to achieve his goals.

Webcomics

• Adventurers!: "That doesn't make much sense." "I have the most powerful handgun ever made. It doesn't have to."
• Arthur, King of Time and Space: Arthur says he hates dealing with bullies, since "one must use their own methods against them because it's all they understand." However, when innocents are harmed, he and his knights are more than willing to give those who harmed them a taste of their own medicine.
• Bob the Angry Flower believes that if everybody had a nuke, then nobody would ever argue with each other. It doesn't work.
• Used with a Lampshade Hanging in this Existential Comics strip, when Simone Weil uses an Appeal To Force to convince Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx that force is the driving force of history.
  Weill: I think I can convince you both if you hear me out.
  Hegel: What argument could you possibly offer for such a simplistic doctrine?
  Weill: **pulls a gun** Say that it's force, or I'll shoot you! SAY IT!
• This is the principle by which Baron Wulfenbach rules Europa in Girl Genius despite only being a mere Baron (roughly equivalent to a lieutenant commanding an entire army)- he has the most powerful military (including an entire fleet of airships, the allegiance of the Jagers and the Dreen among other deadly creatures, and a host of destructive technology captured from other defeated Sparks) so nobody in Europa can oppose him. He's a very benevolent tyrant who rules by only two rules: anyone who finds anything relating to The Other must turn it over to him immediately, and "Don't make me come over there" (i.e "do what you want as long as you don't start a war"). But when you cross him, he will kick your ass.
• How I Killed Your Master: #055
  Fang Lin: So this nobody of a farmer, Meng Qi, he pops up and says he's Yan Yu's nephew. He accuses General Wen of usurping the governor's court, says he has no authority beyond the tip of a spear.
  Liu Wong: What'd Wen Yuan say to that?
  Fang Lin: "Good thing I have five thousand of them."
  Liu Wong: Ha! [Beat] Well, it is a good point.
• Nedroid: When Reginald is taken hostage:
  Beartato: Give me three thousand dollars!
  Bank Teller: Do you have an account with us?
  Beartato: I have a missile!
• The Order of the Stick: Token Evil Teammate Belkar has been on both ends of this trope.
  • Roy convinces him early on that he can't kill teammates for XP on the basis that Roy will kill him if he tries.
    Belkar: You make a persuasive argument. And by that, I mean there are more of you and you are using that to coerce me into obeying your moral code.
    Roy: I'll take it.
  • Much later, Belkar uses it to convincingly pass as a zombie.
    Hobgoblin: I don't know, he doesn't really look undead...
    
    **Belkar stabs the hobgoblin**
    Belkar: Anyone else wanna discuss my creature type with me?
    Other hobgoblin: No, no, I think we're all set here.
• Schlock Mercenary:
  • Tagon's mercenaries have been legally commissioned to hunt and kill attorney-drones. People tend to get very upset when you gun down their lawyers, but as Captain Tagon says to one such upset client: "Get as mad as you want. You'll have a hard time suing me."
  • During the CSI Affectionate Parody, Harrick says that while they have enough evidence to hold Schlock, they have to let Tagon go. Grizzly comments that Tagon can go back to his mercenary company and return in force to break his sergeant out, which is why the judge is "visiting friends" in a bunker on the other side of the planet.
  • This is how Kevyn overcomes the problem of getting everyone in without an invitation.
    Doorman: I was going to say "Not on the List". Did you say "armed"?
    Kevyn: No, I said "you should check the list again, this time in Edit mode."
  • At one point, Ebbirnoth rips into Pibald for irresponsible use of explosives, and Pi points out that they're both the same rank and thus he's not obligated to listen to another dressing-down. Ebby acknowledges that in terms of rank Pi is correct, but in other terms, the fact is that Ebby is wearing Powered Armour and Pi is not.
    Ebby: You don't have to stand here and accept a reprimand from a fellow lieutenant. But you do have to stand here and accept a reprimand from a guy in full power armour who knows you did something incredibly stupid!
    Pi: Oh, so now Might Makes Right and diplomacy flows from the barrel of a gun?
    Kevyn: (appearing behind him) That's a pretty good description of the business we're in.
  • Petey isn't averse to deploying it, either, particularly when it comes to people who have already attempted to do terrible things.
    Tohdfraug: You have no right to pass judgement on me!
    Petey: Per your own actions, you appear to believe that might makes right.
    Tohdfraug: I don't like where this is going.
    Petey: Oh good, I was hoping you wouldn't.
• In Strong Female Protagonist, upon learning that Max had the ability to supercharge the abilities of other biodynamics, Alison sought him out to convince him to provide a boost to Feral, who had earlier agreed to be Strapped to an Operating Table as a perpetual organ donor. When Max refused Alison's request regardless of how she spun it, she eventually resorted to physical coercion.
  Max: WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!?
  Alison: I'm creating an incentive structure.

Web Original

• Enter the Farside: Shaun is more than capable of hurting anybody with ease, so he intimidates and uses small displays of force to get that idea across to people, without actually having to hurt them at all. As long as people are aware that he can, they know better than to try anything.

Western Animation

• The Fairly OddParents! has Jorgen von Strangle, the self-proclaimed strongest fairy in the universe, who uses this sometimes. One of the Oh Yeah! Cartoons shorts had him using this to win every award at a fairy award show.
• Futurama:
  • In "War Is The H-Word", Bender has a bomb implanted inside his body and it will "detonate the instant the robot unwittingly speaks a certain word", wiping out an entire planet. It's the one word he uses more than any other: ASS. After finding that out, he starts a game of "Make Bender happy or he blows up the planet!".
  • This trope also happens in "Bender's Game" (Screw the Rules, I Have A Big Stick) when Leegola tries to convince the peaceful centaurs to join in the fight against the Evil Overlord and agrees to their contest for leadership... Tedious Debate! Later Leegola shows up leading the army:
    Leegola: Prepare to fire again, brave cowards!
    Hermaphrodite: I still say, I won the debate. (Leegola strikes him in the stomach with a piece of wood)
• The heroes pull this in the ending of Gravity Falls. When Dipper and Mabel are about to take the bus home at the end of the summer, the driver says that Mabel can't bring her pet pig because animals aren't allowed on the bus. Grunkle Stan makes a show of putting on his brass knuckles and Grunkle Ford lifts his coat to show off his gun. The driver decides there's no problem with letting a pig ride on the bus.
• In the Finnish political satire Itsevaltiaat, the Finnish government finds an abandoned handheld nuclear bomb. In the next EU meeting, the Finnish president tries to speak but is constantly interrupted and ignored. The Finnish PM proceeds to pull the nuke out of his case and demand attention. Later his government comrades call him out.
  Man: You can't just pull that nuke whenever you want to talk.
  PM: Yes, yes I can. We have a nuke now, and it gives us access to tables where decisions are done.
• Kaeloo: This trope is repeatedly Played for Laughs, as Kaeloo (who has the power of Hulking Out) and Mr. Cat (who owns several assorted weapons) will cheerfully threaten other people into doing whatever they want by threatening bodily harm if they object.

Real Life

• According to Carl von Clausewitz, "War is the continuation of Politik by other means". However, focus on the words alone has often led to significant misunderstanding. One common (mis-)interpretation is that he meant 'when diplomacy fails, use the military'. What he actually meant is that wars are generally political and (are intended to) serve political ends. In short, 'We fight for things and not for fighting's sake'. This was a counter-argument to the argument (which he posited earlier in the text) that war was always fought for its own sake and had no political dimension, a position which he examined extensively and determined 'made no bloody sense'.
• Russia pulled this on Georgia when they moved in to "liberate" South Ossetia from them, betting that the United States and Europe wouldn't intervene and get into a direct conflict with Russia. Notably this happened after Georgia attempted to attack Russian soil while the world was busy with yet another big sports event and failed spectacularly.
• China relies on this for some of the stunts it pulls in the South China Sea, such as unilaterally expanding its airspace, betting that no one will call them on it because it would be too costly to fight a war over it. In fact, this is basically their bread-and-butter in general, as they completely disregard international laws and will basically do whatever they want, because they (apparently) believe themselves to be powerful, and, therefore, the laws don't apply to them.
• North Korea seems to take this approach to foreign policy; if they have nukes, they can threaten other countries into giving them what Dear Leader wants. Not that it's entirely successful, mind you, but it does tend to get them aid as long as they make promises they can later just go back on. There's a great deal of evidence to suggest that China is no longer interested in North Korea and apparently has privately communicated with the United States that if the US reunifies Korea under South Korean rule, China wouldn't stop them. Other reports suggest that this only applies if North Korea starts the conflict — if the USA or South Korea pre-emptively invades, China would be forced to do something (whether just lodging A Very Angry Letter with the U.N. or fighting The Second Korean War) to avoid getting a reputation for leaving its friends in the lurch and just generally looking bad. Even if that means supporting North Korea.
• When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait over slant drilling, he first floated the idea by the US ambassador to make sure that the United States wouldn't intervene. He thought (or seemed to believe) that the ambassador was implicitly saying that the US would not intervene. The 1991 Gulf War was the result.
• This was Ancient Rome's MO. "Give us your country. No? Good luck with that!"
  • A rare one-man example is Julius Caesar, who proceeded to conquer Gaul despite the Roman Senate's protests that doing so was both unnecessary and illegal. He then went on to use his army to force them to appoint him dictator. Once Caesar had shown that power, not the laws of the state, determined who controlled Rome, he set the stage for the state of Roman politics for centuries to come.
  • The Roman Empire was inherently unstable as the office of Emperor wasn't exactly a formal title, and there were no legal means of succession (some Emperor's got around this by appointing a younger co-Emperor who would become sole Emperor on their death). This meant that whoever could bring the biggest army to Rome would become Emperor. In bad times, multiple Emperors would briefly hold the position, there was the "Year of the Four Emperors (AD 69)", "The Year of the Five Emperors (AD 193), and the "Year of the Six Emperors (AD 238)".
  • The Romans had sharp memories of being on the other side of this, though. In the semi-legendary past, the Gauls sacked almost all of Rome and agreed to spare what was left in exchange for a ransom of 1,000 pounds of gold. A balance scale was brought out to weigh the ransom. When the Romans complained that the Gauls were using dishonest weights, the Gaulish chieftain threw his sword onto the scale with the words "Vae victis" ("woe to the vanquished").
  • The Emperor Hadrian, who prided himself on his erudition, once criticized a philosopher named Favorinus for what Hadrian claimed was an error in logic. Rather than rebut, Favorinus admitted to being wrong. Asked later why he had done so, he replied that it was only natural for a man with thirty legions at his command to be acclaimed the superior intellect.
• The British Empire, most notably during the Opium Wars, where the choices presented to China were to trade on Britain's terms or face war.
  • Especially since the Chinese originally assumed that the British government had nothing to do with the opium trade and thus felt that there'd be no consequences to destroying all of the opium in the warehouses. The Royal Navy showed them the error of their thinking.
• The Chinese themselves pulled this trope many times in their long history, right up until the Opium Wars when they effectively held British traders and capital hostage in exchange for the cessation of the Opium trade. This turned out to be a bad move — this tactic only works if you have the biggest nuke.
• Exemplified in the USA's case by Theodore Roosevelt's (in)famous quote, "If you speak softly and carry a big stick, you will go far." Roosevelt himself was quoting a supposedly West African proverb. The idea was you walked and talked normally but made sure everyone knew you were carrying a big stick.
• One faction of early Muslim leaders claimed to be descended from one of Muhammed's daughters. When asked to provide evidence of this by a group of scholars the leader apparently drew his sword, placed it against the man's neck, and said "this is my evidence". The scholars decided not to press the issue.
• The security council of the UN has the 5 traditional nuclear powers with veto powers that can prevent any action. Thus, by having a nuke, you too can help set world policy. If you were on the winning side of World War II, that is. (And it's no coincidence that none of the countries from the losing side have nukes.) It made sense when the UN was set up in the 1940s when Britain and France controlled most of Africa and much of Asia.
• "You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word." — Al Capone. This sounds incredibly awesome when spoken by Leonard Nimoy for Civilization IV.
• Louis XIV of France referenced this when commissioning artillery for his armies: every cannon was cast with the motto ULTIMA RATIO REGUM on the barrel, Latin for "The last argument of Kings."
• Gangs and school bullies gain local power by beating the crap out of anyone who does not do what they say.
• There is a story about a group of Templars who were put on trial in a small village a short time after the order was declared heretical. This group, being the dominant military power in the area, arrived at their trial mounted on horseback, fully armed and armored. They were all acquitted and set free.
• Domestic Abusers maintain so much power over their victims to keep them from leaving, or even "stepping out of line" in the slightest, by threatening their victim with being hurt (or killed), with hurting their children, pets, and/or personal property, with reporting them to the immigration department, with ostracism from a community (such as relatives, or a religious community), or with abandonment, just to name a few ways.
• Many anti-spanking advocates argue that disciplining a child through Corporal Punishment is essentially this trope. The argument being that it doesn't actually teach a child wrong and right but rather the parents telling them "do as I say or I'll hit you".
• Card shark Canada Bill Jones' famous saying, "A Smith & Wesson beats four aces."
• Mao Zedong was on record saying that "political power comes from the barrel of a gun."
• Averted with contract law in most places. A contract is usually invalid if it's signed "under duress." But then again, that law is based on the state's ability to enforce it in the first place...
• Direct action, ranging from demonstrations, strikes, and sit-ins to sabotage and vandalism, is meant to force an opponent to remedy certain social issues.
• "Rubber-hose cryptanalysis," or torturing someone to get a password or other security key out of them. Without torture, people may be compelled by law enforcement to unlock devices, such as when crossing a border or they are a suspect in a criminal case.
• During the English Civil War, Cornet George Joyce came to arrest King Charles without any such order from Parliament. The King demanded to know what warrant Joyce had; after a few uncomfortable attempts to think of a reason or avoid the question, Joyce pointed to his soldiers.
  "Your warrant," said Charles, smiling, "is writ in fair characters, legible without spelling."
• Honor-Related Abuse: Don't make waves, step out of line, or otherwise threaten our Family Honor, or we'll hurt/kill/maim/etc. you.
• Arguably the basis of all law enforcement, by State Monopoly on Violence. Follow the law, or the state will enforce it on you. Some libertarians or anarchists take this argument to the extent of claiming that law enforcement by its very nature is tyrannical.
• In the Wild West, a judge named Roy Bean released an Irishman accused of murdering his Chinese coworker on the grounds that while murder was defined as the killing of a human being, there was no rule against killing Chinamen. His decision probably had less to do with racism and more to do with the mob of Irishmen threatening to lynch him if he didn't let the man go.
• Basis of the popular American saying, “God created man, but Sam Colt made them equal.” (By dispersing the ability of force to the common man)
• People studying or writing about medieval history frequently make significant emphasis on "claims to the throne", fundamentally the idea that being descended from a previous title-holder makes one more worthy of the title than the incumbent. Such claims are even the basis for mechanics in some video games like the Crusader Kings series. The truth is, claims were really just propaganda to justify trying to seize the throne to potential co-conspirators: these things were usually settled on the battlefield. Notably, King Henry VII Tudor of England, the final winner of the Wars of the Roses, had no discernible claim to the throne whatsoever: he was a distant, matrilineal descendant of an illegitimate son of Edward III Plantagenet, and was crowned primarily because he was the leader of the coalition that defeated and killed the incumbent Richard III (though he did subsequently marry Richard's niece, Elizabeth of York, to strengthen his claim).
• This is a common argument among defenders of the 2nd Amendment. The logic is roughly thus: A just government depends on the consent of the governed, because government without consent is tyranny. But if the government has a monopoly on force (or even an imbalance of force — say, the police are armed with machine guns while the populace is limited to hunting rifles), then it no longer needs consent. It can do what it likes, and the opposition is simply imprisoned/slienced/assassinated/disappeared/whatever. Therefore, the right to bear arms is the most important right, because it's this right that secures all the others.

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