British Soldier: Taste my sword, French person!
French Soldier: No! Wait! We are allies! This is World War I!
British Soldier: I'm terribly sorry! I thought it was the Hundred Years War! Does this mean I can kill Italians?
French Soldier: (consulting manual) No, I'm afraid not. Not until World War II.
The fun part? You get to pick your war. Either of the World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War I, Gulf War II, ...
the list is pretty long. The
Cold War and the Drug War are out of bounds, though.
The further back in time you go, say from the American Civil War on back to
The Trojan War, the more expensive your uniform wardrobe will get. This also applies to going forward in time to the
Bug War,
Robot War, Forever War, or Clone War. Military surplus is not available from these wars.
While we're on the subject, please note that you may rely on the audience already knowing that
war is hell. Hopefully, you will have something additional to say.
Of note in this topic is
Gomer Pyle USMC, notable for being made and presumably taking place during the Vietnam War. No mention of that conflict or country is ever made, and the Marines in Gomer's unit just ride out a dark chapter in US military history on the home front, seemingly unaware that anything war-like is happening, as they blunder through misadventure after misadventure. Of a longer scale to this is
Beetle Bailey, whose title character joined the Army during the Korean War, and has blundered through over 50 years of US conflict.
The roles of the air forces and navies were rarely covered, owing to the fact that TV budgets don't cover Spitfire hire. However, during the 40's hundreds of Hollywood
movies were made about the then-ongoing Second World War. The ready availability of props and mock-ups, as well as real
Stock Footage, made shows about pilots and sailors possible then. In several series, like
Black Sheep Squadron and
McHale's Navy, most of the action focused on antics carried out on base, to cut down on the necessary combat footage.
Note: the
correct pronunciation is "
JOO-rin-na WAW-ah".
Contrast
War Was Beginning.
Examples
Real Life Wars
- Gallic and Roman Civil War
- Norman Conquest
- The Crusades
- The Hundred Years' War
- Wars of the Roses
- Sengoku Jidai
- English Civil War
- Glorious Revolution
- Frontier "Indian Wars" (so-called)
- French Revolution
- World War I
- Irish War of Independence
- World War II
- A Bridge Too Far - Operation Market-Garden, and its ultimate failure, the Allied attempt to break through German lines and seize several bridges in the occupied Netherlands.
- 'Allo 'Allo! (portrayed all sides, German, British, French, Italian, as incompetent fools, and lasted for ten years)
- Band of Brothers - Follows Easy Company (of 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division) from training through the end of the war, including D-Day, Market Garden, and Bastogne.
- The Battle of Britain - where the movie budget did cover Spitfire hire, and Hurricane hire, and Me109 hire and He111 hire from the Spanish Airforce.
- The Big Red One (movie starts at the end of WWI).
- Black Sheep Squadron - Marine Corps pilots in Pacific. This series was based on a real person (Greg Boyington) and had many of his real characteristics. Many of the missions in the series were completely fictitious and based on fictional places, many of which were Spanish-sounding names. Greg Boyington made a guest appearance in one episode.
- Das Boot
- Call of Duty - Discounting the Modern Warfare spinoff series and Black Ops.
- Captain America: The First Avenger
- Combat
- Company of Heroes
- Dad's Army
- The Dam Busters
- Danger: UXB
- The Dirty Dozen
- Doctor Who
- The Eagle Has Landed
- The English Patient
- Flags of Our Fathers
- The Great Escape - Realistic Prison Camp
- The Great Raid
- Gung Ho, the WWII version about the Makin Island Raid, not the comedy version about Japanese auto manufacturing in America.
- The Guns of Navarone
- Hogan's Heroes - Comic Prison Camp
- It Ain't Half Hot Mum
- Jackboots on Whitehall
- Jeux interdits (English title: Forbidden Games)
- Kelly's Heroes - The Italian Job During The War!
- Letters From Iwo Jima
- The Longest Day - D-Day
- The Man who Never Was
- Max Manus
- McHale's Navy - The Navy (obviously)
- The Medal of Honor series (apart from the 2010 game).
- Memphis Belle
- Midway - Turning point in the war's Pacific theatre
- Mr. Roberts
- Operation Peticoat
- Pearl Harbor
- The Rat Patrol
- Saving Private Ryan
- Secret Army
- Slaughterhouse Five
- Stalag 17 - Darkly Comic Prison Camp.
- The Thin Red Line
- To Hell and Back
- Tora! Tora! Tora! - Named for the code words used by the Japanese to signal that the Pearl Harbor attack had been successful.
- Torchwood
- Valkyria Chronicles, though some elements also let it fit as World War One.
- Valkyrie
- Various Wartime Cartoons
- Wolfenstein 3D
- First Indochina War
- Korean War
- The Manchurian Candidate (original version).
- M*A*S*H (which, oddly enough, lasted much longer than the active hostilities during the Korean War did!)
- Pork Chop Hill
- Algerian War of Independence
- Vietnam War
- Iran-Iraq War
- Gulf War
- War in Afghanistan (2001)
- Iraq War
Fictional Types of War
- Alien Invasion
- Bug War
- Demonic Invaders
- Interstellar Civil War
- The Magic Versus Technology War
- Robot War
- World War III
- Various others
- Babylon 5 gives us the Earth-Minbari War, which finished ten years before the series started, is what people usually refer to when they say "during the war...". There's also the Dilgar War, referred to in one episode but very important to the series' backstory (as it proved the Earth Alliance's status as a major galactic power). The series itself, however, is set during no less than six concurrent, interrelated wars:
- The Shadow War
- The Earth Alliance Civil War
- The Minbari Civil War
- The Second Centauri-Narn War
- The Drakh War
- The Telepath War
- Mobile Suit Gundam
- Fullmetal Alchemist
