Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
A Military Brat is exactly what the name implies: someone who grew up with at least one parent in the military. Sometimes both parents. Tends to crop up a lot in American series and works of fiction.
Definitely, definitely a Truth In Television.
In fiction, if a character has this as a backstory, you can expect at least one of the following to have affected him or her in some way:
- Having a very tough, conservative or strict upbringing;
- Frequent moves and parental absences;
- Sometimes a parent (often the father) will have died in some war.
- Lived on a base in a foreign country during their formative years, giving them an excuse for knowing an obscure foreign language or local custom.
Used often in war movies to explain why a character enlisted; the most common sub-explanation of this is that he wants to make his mother/father proud.
See Also: Circus Brat, which is sort of the opposite.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- Quintessential anime example: Misa Hayase from Macross.
- Very common in Gundam series.
- In a rare Magical Girl example, many from Nanoha, especially the younger Harlaowns, the Nakajima sisters, Vivio Takamachi, etc.
Comic Books
- Lois Lane from most continuities of Superman.
- Post Silver Age anyway. Prior to that she was a farm girl with an upbringing very similar to Clark Kent's.
- Rick Flag from Suicide Squad.
- The modern Batwoman, Kate Kane is one. Her mother was a Intel officer and her father was a Special Forces operator.
Film
- Stepanek, the "dedicated pain-in-the-butt" character, from Down Periscope was the son of Admiral Winslow, and was rebelling... trying to get dismissed from sub duty. No one realizes the connection until it's openly stated, because the son is using Mom's last name.
- O-Ren Ishii of Kill Bill was the daughter of a Chinese-American military guy and a Japanese mother. The Bride even refers to her as an "army brat" before going into her story, which had O-Ren's parents killed by Boss Matsumoto and his Yakuza gangsters.
- The protagonist of The Fast And The Furious 3.
- Doug Masters and his friends in Iron Eagle.
- The B.R.A.T. Patrol
- Zach Mayo and Sid Worley, from An Officer And A Gentleman
- Janey Glenn in Girls Just Want to Have Fun is the daughter of Colonel Glenn.
- The Belmont Sisters from Night Of The Comet. Mainly invoked as a Hand Wave as to why two valley girls would know anything about assault rifles.
Literature
- Hiro Protagonist from Snow Crash.
- Ryan Azarcon from the Warchild Series.
- Kids of older cast members in the Star Wars Expanded Universe. When Han and Leia's three were really young they were kept in an undisclosed location to be safe, and naturally they followed their parents' and grandparents' courses to various degrees. Of course, neither of their parents were precisely military, but they did tend to be busy a lot. Wedge Antilles's two girls are a better example of the trope. One became an Ace Pilot like her father, the other an Intelligence operative like her mother. Aww.
- Lancer from the Whateley Universe
Live Action TV
- Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan from M*A*S*H
- Jill Taylor from Home Improvement.
- Sam Carter of Stargate SG 1.
- Both Tyler and Wendy in The Middleman.
- The Closer is the daughter of a military man. In an early episode of the first season, her lifelong conditioning to follow orders given by this type of man leads to her losing the case.
- Carly and Spencer from iCarly. They seem to avert every single stereotype, whether on purpose or the submarine being a good way of getting the parents out of the picture.
- House's father was a Marine, and everything about House can be explained by that fact:
- House being a Jerk Ass: His strict upbringing at the hands of his father (baths in icewater, having to sleep outside of the house, not being allowed to eat dinner if he was so much as a few seconds late) had a definite bad effect on his attitude. It also gave House his issues with authority.
- House becoming a doctor: While his father was stationed in Japan, he saw a man at a hospital he thought was a janitor. Then he saw the doctors hanging on his every word when they were faced with a difficult case. Turns out, he was a buraku, and was listened to because he was right. This made it much easier for House to justify being a Dr Jerk.
- House's distrust of claimed sexual fidelity: He figured out that he wasn't John House's son when he was twelve.
- The X-Files. Scully is a navy brat.
- A.C. Slater in Saved By The Bell, although it wasn't brought up very often.
- Carole Hanson from The Saddle Club.
- Star Trek features several. Most obviously, there are the "kid characters" Wesley Crusher and Jake Sisko; the latter defies the Generation Xerox tendency by becoming a journalist and novelist instead of joining Starfleet. In Star Trek The Next Generation, Geordi LaForge is explicitly described as a "Starfleet brat", with both parents in the service, who rather enjoyed his wandering childhood. Background material and the new movie put James Kirk's father and mother in Starfleet as well. Finally, we have Tom Paris, a less than ideal admiral's son.
Rock Opera
Video Games
- The protagonist of Sentimental Graffiti met the girls he did because his father was in the military.
- In Mass Effect, one may chose this background for the player's character, Commander Shepherd. Not only is it the only background choice where Shepherd isn't an outright orphan, but the background specific sidequest involves making a call to Shepherd's mother, who is still active-duty and the XO aboard an Alliance capital ship.
- Rinoa Heartilly in Final Fantasy VIII. As one can imagine, her joining a resistance movement to oppose the military in which her father is a general makes things tense.
- Meryl of Metal Gear Solid has been raised by the army to the point that she felt more comfortable with a gun than a bra.
- Which may explain why keeping a Desert Eagle magazine in her cleavage isn't a discomfort.
- Don't forget Ocelot, who is the son of two legendary soldiers, The Boss and The Sorrow.
Web Comics
- Captain Tagon of Schlock Mercenary.
- In Anti-Heroes, the backstory of Aldran, one of the main characters, is revealed in a strip entitled... Military Brat.
Western Animation
- Gus Griswold in Recess. Secondary character "Corn Chip Girl" La Maize is a Navy brat.
- Trixie from American Dragon Jake Long, both her parents are pilots. Her father military, her mother commercial airliner.
Web Original
|
|
