General Ripper - Television Tropes & Idioms

A hard, grizzled military man, promoted to the highest echelons of power because of his exemplary record. At some point, however, something changed.

Maybe the war he'd been fighting for his whole life ended abruptly. Maybe he's haunted by his past in the field. Maybe he's just flipped. At any rate, he's obsessed with a particular enemy, and will take any means to rally the troops to battle against this foe, "Enemy X".

Monster attack? It was Enemy X. Terrorist attack? Gotta be Enemy X. Local superhero? Obvious spy for Enemy X. Everything quiet on the front? Enemy X is just lulling us into complacency so he can strike when our guard is down.

Enemy X comes in a host of forms. Nazis, Commies (once common but now dead), Aliens, robots, Muslims, the undead, teddy bears, etc...

A character type that is an aftereffect of the Cold War. It's officers like him that turn the The Cavalry into The Evil Army. Basically, who The Brigadier becomes when you sap and impurify his precious bodily fluids.

Named for Air Force General Jack D. Ripper, the patriotic madman who triggered World War III in the film Doctor Strangelove. He launched his wing of B-52's on an irrevocable attack mission, because of a paranoid delusion involving Communists, fluoride, and his "precious bodily fluids". His portrayal (along with that of the slightly milder Gen. Buck Turgidson from the same film) set the example for all to follow. Ripper is of course named after a certain Victorian serial killer.

Contrast with The Brigadier.

Examples:

In the real world, Ripper is generally thought to have been based on USAF General Curtis LeMay, the commander of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) from 1949 to 1957, and a member of the JCOS during the Kennedy Administration. He was known for his increasingly belligerent stance towards Communism, to the point of repeatedly recommending that a pre-emptive strike be made against the USSR and Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
- It should be pointed out that LeMay actually abhorred war.
General Hardcastle from Superman The Animated Series and Justice League. His feelings about the Man of Steel slowly grew from mild xenophobia (Can't trust'im, he's not from Earth) to becoming a key player in a governmental conspiracy against him and pretty much all the other JL members.
General Eiling, also from Justice League, is worth note for how he turned himself into a Hulk-like creature in order to protect America from the League and metahumans in general...and ends up only fighting members of the League without metahuman powers (though the heroes in question have some cool gear). He who fights monsters...
- It's worth noting that Eiling is voiced by (and physically resembles) J.K. Simmons, who has played another hero-hater: J. Jonah Jamison.
The mangled Jim Phelps in the first Mission Impossible movie shows a fair number of the symptoms of this character type.
Lt. Colonel Archer from Fullmetal Alchemist is always out to hunt down anyone his superiors label an enemy of the State with extreme prejudice, if it means promotions and glory for himself. He's the perfect dupe for whatever Government Conspiracy is being cooked up by the homunculi.
- The manga gives us Major Kimblee, by far the most Squicktastic character in either version. He really has to be seen to be believed.
  - Kimblee's scarier in that he doesn't give a rat's ass about enemies or promotions, he's just enjoying himself and being amused by all the plotting and carnage.
Taken to humorous extremes in a late episode of Megas XLR: the characters encounter a giant robot built by the US military in the '50s, which was built to fight "the enemy". When asked who that was, it found that piece of data missing -- therefore, "ALL is my enemy!"
Parodied on South Park in the episode "ManBearPig", wherein Al Gore has dedicated his post-political career to tracking down and destroying the titular ManBearPig, a hybrid monster which he blames for all of his personal and political failures.
- Is Cartmen like this to Kyle and all of Judism? He really seems to have it in for Kyle, though... Really.
The unnamed General in the PC First Person Shooter Vivisector: Beast Within is obsessed with the Biological Mash Ups that are the enemies in the game, first as a source of disposable uber-soldiers, then as a force to control and exterminate after they rebel against his cruel treatment. He goes as far as to nuke the rebelling hybrids' village and allow a train-full of them to be destroyed to keep them in line, and even kills the protagonist's friend to ensure he helps him corral the beasts.
Admiral Helena Cain, of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica, may be a rare female example -- a hotshot young military commander who cracked under pressure after the Cylon attack, leading her to abandon civilians, condone torture and human-rights violations against Cylon prisoners (would the troper who wrote that please repeat it out loud slowly to him or her self?), and take a seriously hard-line attitude towards insubordination in the ranks, all in the name of her suicidal quest to obliterate the Cylon fleet.
- Helena Cain is really just a copy of Commander Cain from the original Battlestar Galactica. He was played by Lloyd Bridges. This editor also believes that Commander Cain was based on George S. Patton.
  - Ron Moore agrees in the Razor DVD commentary.
  - Then this troper wants to know what Ron Moore is smoking, given that the original Commander Cain did not commit war crimes, organize gang rapes, murder subordinates, or cold-bloodedly massacre Colonial civilians to steal their supplies... and Admiral Caine did all of the above without flinching.
  - This troper would like to know what you're smoking, because if you haven't gotten the memo, Starbuck is a girl, cylons look human, and everything's Darker And Edgier. If you expected something like that to be on a kids' show in the seventies.... well...
  - Which does absolutely nothing to explain how the original 70s "Patton In Space" version is purportedly 'just a copy of' the modern version, given that the two series are intended to be anything but copies of each other. (And that they have succeeded in this goal amazingly.)
General Hein of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within becomes obsessed with wiping out the alien invaders at the source, and eventually wipes out an entire city to accomplish the goal.
John Canmore, aka John Castaway, in the last season of Gargoyles. After he accidentally shoots his brother while trying to kill Goliath, he starts "What have I..." only to correct himself with "What have they done?!" From then on, he fits this trope well.
- Actually, Castaway is a callback to Demona's Start Of Darkness. A scheme to drive humans away from her clan ends up in said clan getting massacred, prompting the same "What have they done?!" correction and leading to a hatred of humanity.
In Marvel Comics, and various Incredible Hulk adaptions, General "Thunderbolt" Ross is obsessed with stopping the Hulk at any cost, often interfering with Bruce Banner's attempts to cure himself in the process.
Every captain in the Star Trek franchise have each come to the brink of becoming General Rippers, before pulling back: Captain Kirk in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (Klingons); Captain Picard in Star Trek: First Contact (Borg); Captain Sisko in the latter seasons of Star Trek Deep Space Nine (The Maquis); Captain Janeway in the Star Trek Voyager episode "Equinox" (Captain Ransom and his crew of the titular ship), and Captain Archer in the latter half of Star Trek Enterprise (The Xindi).
- There was also Admiral Satie, renowned for her expertise in sniffing out conspiracies, going loco in the Next Generation episode "The Drumhead". Apparently, being famous as a conspiracy-uncoverer makes one pretty paranoid in one's old age...
- And Admiral Leyton, who tried to overthrow the Federation government and install a Starfleet-run military regime because he believed it was necessary to combat the Dominion.
Alloran-Semitur-Corass in Animorphs behaves like this in The Andalite Chronicles (he's disgraced because he released the quantum virus onto the Hork-Bajir homeworld literally breaking nearly all Hork-Bajir into molecules) and he demands that Elfangor slaughter an entire pool of Yeerk prisoners. In a cruel twist of fate, Elfangor's defiance and insistence on not becoming the monster directly leads to Alloran becoming Visser Three, the only Andalite-Controller.
Mercilessly skewered in the film Mars Attacks!. General Decker rants and raves with the best of them, but his instincts prove entirely correct about the nature of the Martians.
George S. Patton is often seen as a Real Life example.
General Rogard in The Iron Giant is an inversion. He acts reasonably and cautiously, leaving the ranting and recklessness to Kent Mansley, a minor government agent.
Captain Skroeder in Short Circuit, whose pursuit of wayward military robot prototype Number 5 encompassed defying the orders of the CO of the company he was head of security for and setting up one of the robot's designers as bait for an ambush when said designer was having a meeting with the robot's female companion (a meeting that could've easily landed the robot in their hands had he not interfered), mostly due to his high level of technophobia (though, given that the robot's primary laser weapon was armed and combat-ready when it went AWOL, even the movie's crew admitted he was technically in the right for dogging it as he did, despite his questionable methods).
General Stanis Metzov in The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold. None too stable to start with, and with dark secrets in his past, he becomes fixated on a certain Ensign Miles Vorkosigan after Miles repeatedly crosses him... pretty much by accident.
- Be fair now, someone who leads a mutiny that costs an officer his career (never mind that Metzov was about to initate a massacre of support staff using green trainees as triggermen) would earn the ire of most. Stanis just went a bit... overboard.
In the PC game No One Lives Forever 2, American General Hawkins favors attacking the Russians first using trained sharks with nukes attached to them that would swim up the Volga to Moscow. When he gets to push the red button at the end of the game, he comments with glee, "I wish I had some popcorn!"
The Imperial Guard in Warhammer 40000 makes this a matter of policy from Lord Commander Militant to Lieutenant, and hopes for combat skill to match. It doesn't always get it.
This seems to be how the Knights Of The Old Republic prequel comics is going to explain the Face Heel Turn of Admiral Saul Karath, one of the major antagonists of the first video game of the franchise. He's certainly been increasingly obsessed by Zayne, the comics' protagonist, thinking him a spy and blaming him for much of the collapse of the Republic.