Tropers / Dialga X

I am Pokemon fan and a Furry. I have contributed to a multitude of tropes and works.

Launches

• A Handful for an Eye
• Steel Ear Drums
• No Rocket Backblast
• Magnetic Weapons
• Concealment Equals Cover (working title: Everything is Bulletproof)
• Latias Journey
• Nail 'Em
• Poke Wars
• Insane Cafe Series
• Deus Ax Machina

Tropes Being Considered

None at the moment.

Tropes Dropped

• Regenerating Scenery
• I Have A Gun
• Show Of Force
• Pretendian

Things I Hate

• The Conversion Bureau - I loathe this fic.
  • Chatoyance - Purple Prose, vile messages and morals, unsubtle messages and morals, Unfortunate Implications, egotistical author and more. What's there to like about her works?
• Fan Dumb - MST3K Mantra, people.
• Hate Dumb - MST3K Mantra, people.
• Fan Hater - Pettiness to its extreme.
• God-Mode Sue - Don't make your protagonist obscenely overpowered; it makes a terrible story.

Archive of deleted Real Life trope entries

Disclaimer: These are merely archived from the old history pages and kept here for posterity. The offensiveness of these examples is irrelevant; they are merely here for amusement, nothing more.

If anyone starts bringing up natter or flames here or on these trope pages, I will delete the natter and flame bait but the examples will remain.

Proud Warrior Race

• A case of Truth in Television, as the British Empire (and others) had the designation 'Martial Race' to describe just these sorts of peoples. The most familiar result of this concept are the Gurkhas in the service of the British Army. Of course, the truth of the classification is itself up for debate, so it might be a case of Possible Truth In Generalisation, which lacks an article.
  • That said, it's hard to deny the appropriateness of this trope for, say, the Gurkhas, and the Rajputs in general.
    • The Rajputs and Gurkhas were warrior castes, the Indian caste system of old strictly defined what jobs people of certain birth could do, and these guys were designated to the soldiers, a direct analogue with the Feudal warriors of other civilizations. The Caste System was more stable than the European style feudalism, but both systems are long gone, but the pride of belonging has not.
  • On the other hand, the Nation of Shopkeepers did decide to put itself at the top of this list (like all the others)... You could question this logic.
    • Yes, but could the French, Spaniards, Dutch, Germans, Italians, Argentines, etc question that logic?
• The Real Life Vikings believed that only warriors went to the mead-hall of Valhalla (and got to fight again every day, just for fun). Those who died of other causes went to cold, barren, cheerless Hel, or just disappeared, depending on the how good people they were and which modern theory you subscribe to.
  • There was a loophole to that. If you happened to be dying in bed for whatever reason, you had the option of taking your dagger and hacking the 'victory' rune into your own torso. They figured that if you were badass enough for that, you deserved a place in Valhalla. (Makes sense - can you blame a Viking for not dying in battle, if he's so good that he always wins?)
    • You could blame the Viking in question on account of not having been chosen by a Valkyrie, since their whole schtick was to choose the warriors for Valhalla, and would therefor rearrange the battle so that they could collect their warrior while in top form. Doing such things as chaning the trajectories of the arrows. Of course if you are bad ass enough to even avoid a death tailored by demi-goddesses...
  • Don't forget the honored dead had a 50/50 chance of going to Fólkvangr (Freya's realm) instead of Valhalla. Some interpretations make the divide whether you were what we call here a Blood Knight (Valhalla) or if you were defending your home and loved ones (Fólkvangr). Other versions make Fólkvangr open to anyone who died "nobly."
• The Anglo-Saxons. After effectivly curbstomping the Britions, they settled into centuries of fighting anyone they could find, usually each other with wars between kingdoms occuring practically every year. Not only that, but they were obsessed with honour to the point where a warrior surviving a battle where his lord was killed was considered dishonorable in the extreme, and they were of the opinion that losing a battle wasn't shameful so long as the losing army fought with courage and didn't surrender, even when it was glaringly obvious at the start that they were going to lose. They fought the above mentioned Vikings for centuries and ultimatly won. Not particuarly suprisingly, the original Anglo-Saxon religion was basically the same as that of the Vikings, not that the eventual conversion to Christianity made a blind bit of difference.
• The Mamluks. Originally a warrior slave caste in the Egyptian Sultanate, they were intensively trained to be the perfect soldiers, and were taught the furusiyya, a code of courage, generosity, and battlefield (particularly cavalry) tactics. They were repeatedly sent to battle against the Crusaders, and are considered a major reason why most of the Crusades failed. They eventually took over Egypt, ruling for hundreds of years, even beating the Mongols, of all opponents, in 1260. When the Ottoman Turks took over Egypt, it was because they were using their own version of Mamluks, the Janissaries. It took Napoleon (with modern military training, a large conscript army, modern muskets, and Ottoman decadence) to finally beat them outright.
  • Speaking of, the Jannissaries were Christian children converted to Islam and became the Sultan's personal guard. And they packed heat.
• For that matter most cultures have some aspect of this. Maybe HUMANS are a Proud Warrior Race.
  • Truth in Television. Consider the point of storytelling: to take some aspect of human life and examine it at length. We wouldn't be writing about Proud Warrior Races if it weren't pertinent to us somehow. Having said that, to be a Proud Warrior Race, honor-from-beating-up-enemies would have to be central to human culture, and, it isn't, so we as a species don't count.
    • How dare you? I'm gonna kick your ass!
  • Nah, we're too well-organized to be a Proud Warrior Race.
• SPARTANS!
  • Oh yes. If you weren't a Spartan warrior, it meant you were one of their slaves. And if you won every war you fought in and died in bed, you didn't even get a headstone.
    • Uh, no. Spartans weren't stupid (despite what "300" would have you believe). They knew they were a sharp minority (their style of raising Spartiates meant that there were never more than 9,000 at any given time), so while they did have slaves, called Helots, they also had a middle-class made up of immigrants and non-Spartiates called Perioikoi. They were treated with respect and all the dignity a middle class would have been. After all, they farmed the food and made the clothes the Spartans ate and wore. The Spartans knew better than to shit on those who fed and clothed them.
    • Yes, but they were given no say in any political decisions nor were allowed to interbreed with the Spartans.
    • Well, they also believed that if they allowed those things, that the Spartans would be less potent warriors. They needed to protect the genes. And if they allowed the middle class into politics, that could potentially disrupt the system they had set up to produce nigh-perfect proud warrior race guys. So it's not like they didn't give them all their rights because they disrespected them.
  • A very wise man once observed (probably NSFW), "only amateur fascists admire the Spartans."
• The Romans and the Prussians, though known for far more than their fighting prowess, nevertheless held military values in high regard.
• The Celts. They were so nasty they scared the bejesus out of the Romans and actually managed to sack the city at one point. Reputedly, the Romans had to literally teach them (the hard way, natch) the concept of "peace" — as in, not just until they'd recovered from the last fight.
  • One tribe of Gauls did, The Celts one major cultural failing was their inability to unify which is why in the long run the Romans ate their lunch.
• The Mongols traditionally learn to ride a horse as early as they can walk, and even today are known for their archery. Is it any wonder that these guys conquered so much of Asia?
  • And kick Eastern Europe's ass.
  • Hell, the Mongols were so terrifying the Christian world was convinced they were a punishment inflicted on them by Satan. Apparently Genghis Khan decided to confirm said idea.
    • Those were Muslims, and punishment from God, not Satan. The Christians thought for longest time that the Khan himself was a Christian who would deliver them from the perceived Muslim threat. These opinions changed quickly after they had some first-hand experience of him.
    • To be fair, the Sultan brought that one on himself when he executed Genghis's messengers who only wanted to trade.
    • The Sultan's subjects didn't.
  • Also, at the time, fighting with mounted archers was simply unfair. If you had the best mounted archers, you had total control in the field, which means the only thing that can stop you is a fortress. In other words, you can move. They can't. In modern times, the only ways to fight a roaring horde of millions of horse archers would be a horde of choppers.
    • In truth, the effectiveness of mounted archers are debatable. What made the mongol horde deadly at the operational level was their horses; they were even smaller than contemporary European horses and could survive off grazing, which European horses (bread for heavy cavalry tactics and stamina) could not do. On the field, much of their work was done by feigned retreats (their horses were slower than Europe's) and hand cavalry action. Their conquests in much of Asia were handled by coming in -during- someone elses war and simply mopping up, or attacking weak and defenseless kingdoms.
      • Many examples of a Proud Warrior Race got part of their reputation in uneven matches. War is not arranged like an athletic event.
    • Or bombs.
    • I dunno, somehow I doubt archery would work very well against tanks.
• Honor is important in American urban gang culture. This may be an answer to the "open question" in the introduction to this article.
  • Most exemplified in modern culture with the Italian Mafia/Cosa Nostra, street gangs like the notorious ones in LA, not so much.
  • Eh, debatable. The Mafia preached honor and loyalty to the family, the black and latino gangers to the Hood, and many a Prisoner has boasted about being a 'Righteous Con', few really give more than lipservice to any code of conduct, they are all just criminals and there really is no honor among theives.
  • To call random gangs honorable is a flat-out joke, they demand respect because they have guns and superior numbers at a given time, that's it, they aren't proud warrior guys they are common thugs and hoodlums, they are more like the opposite of proud warrior guy, they're cowards and shouldn't be described in any other way.
• This troper is surprised to find this article lacks a mention of the Japanese, particularly the Samurai, whom in his view many Proud Warrior Race cultures are based upon. The main Proud Warrior Race Guy being Tokugawa who unified the country by warfare.
  • This troper is still trying to figure out whether the Japanese are a perfect example of this trope or a complete aversion of it.
    • It probably depends on the era. If you're talking about from the 1930s to 1945, then they would certainly count because of how militaristic they became. If you were talking about the pre-Tokugawa era, possibly. Nowadays, they're mostly an aversion, save for a minority of nationalists. But those guys are usually ignored.
• The outdated idea of Martial Race created by the British in India is an attempt to classify people as proud warrior races.
• Germans. How many wars have they started?
• "Today is a good day to die" originates with the Sioux. So many American Indian peoples had this reputation historically that it would be faster to list the ones who never did: .

Nice Character, Mean Actor

• Sadly, yes.
• Though she always seems to play a nice character, Lindsey Lohan is known to be quite mean off screen.
• Lucille Ball had this reputation in life as well.

Evil Versus Evil

• Hitler vs Stalin in WWII. That is all.
  • Similarly, the Spanish Civil War in the years prior to WWII, fought between Fascist Spanish Nationalists and Republican Spanish Loyalists - more or less an offshoot of the above conflict, only a couple of years earlier.
    • Well, the Spanish Republic was democratic, and NOT communist. The communist help came due to anti-fascism.
• Khomeini's Iran vs Saddam's Iraq in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.
• The Soviet Union and Mao's China nearly came to blows on multiple occasions both before, during and after World War Two.
• Any war between criminal organizations, really. Particularly prominent are the Prohibition era gang wars in the United States and the modern day Mexican drug wars between drug cartels.
• Nationalist vs. Communist China. Neither side was very good.
  • Similarly, North vs. South Vietnam and North vs. South Korea, all sides of which were extremely nasty. Nationalist China (Taiwan) and South Korea had successful democratic revolutions decades later, while Communist China and Vietnam have mellowed to become far less despotic and poverty-stricken with the passage of time. North Korea, however, is now even more of a Crapsack Country.
• Harvard-Yale football games. "You're all a bunch of damn Yankees and I hope you both lose!"
• Arguably, the Thirty Years War. While mostly thought of as a Protestant versus Catholic conflict — and, indeed, religious tensions did play a significant part — it was largely just a massive, selfish power play between the nobles of the Holy Roman Empire and most of Europe which resulted in the loss of countless of lives. Heck, even the "Catholic" and "Protestant" sides were not rigidly divided along those religious lines. Their armies were often composed of mercenary troops with mixed religions. Both sides' armies also had the tendency to rape, pillage, and burn villages, regardless of the religious make up of said villages.

My Country Right Or Wrong

• The American Civil War produced several examples of this; interesting, because during that period it was not uncommon for people's primary loyalty to be to their state, rather than the United States itself.
• At the outset of the civil war, Lincoln offered the command of the Union armies to Robert E. Lee, a Virginian man who, some believe, disagreed with the South's decision to secede as well as being anti-slavery. He refused, as he felt he must remain loyal to Virginia. He also supported the Union when it was clear the South was lost (and thus the Union was now his country once more), refusing the plan to carry on a guerilla war. Note however that this interpretation of his motives is controversial.

Used To Be A Sweet Kid

• Mostly subverted in real life: psychologists find that violent, antisocial schoolchildren almost always grow up into violent, antisocial adults; bullying is among the most stable behaviours known.

Bad Ass Army

• Erwin Rommel was a German in control of a single Panzer Division in the Second World War. They were nicknamed the "Ghost Division," because for long stints of the war no-one, not even the German high command, knew where they were. Under Rommel's command the division moved with unpredictable speed, to the point Rommel described his trips in a letter as a "Lightning Tour De France."
• Note that all the U.S.'s special operations forces from all four services are part of the unified Special Operations Command (SOCOM) - A Badass Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps. The Army's Green Berets, Rangers, and a dedicated Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the Navy's S.E.A.L.s and Special Boat Squadrons, the Air Force's Pararescue Jumpers and Special Operations Wings, and (recently) Marine Special Operations Companies. Forget debating who is the most badass, and just remember that when push comes to shove they all work on the same team.
• The Russian Spetznaz are big enough (about 10,000 strong) and bad enough to qualify. It doesn't hurt that they go through a Training from Hell where casualties during training are considered acceptable losses.
• The Nazi Schutzstaffel, anyone? They weren't the textbook example of the Praetorian Guard for nothing. Nor were they the most feared of the German Wehrmacht for nothing, either. Some of the SS were elite, namely the 1st div. Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler, 2nd div. Das Reich, and 3rd div. Totenkopf. However, the entirety of the Waffen SS was not elite, some weren't even as well trained and equipped as normal Heer units. As for other World War II German badass units, look to Panzergrenadier div. Großdeutschland and Panzer Lehr.
• The 332nd Fighter Group of the U.S. Army Air Corps. Better known as the Tuskegee Airmen. Forget the fact they were Black fighter pilots in a time when Blacks could barely get library cards. They racked up one of the most impressive aerial combat records of any group of fighter pilots in any war and they did it against the Luftwaffe, who were a pretty Badass Army themselves. Especially when one of them took out a jet fighter using a P-51 Mustang. Badass indeed.
  • And according to the movie (with Laurence Fishburn) they didn't loose a single bomber that they were protecting, ever.
• The Spartans again; this is a case of Truth in Television. The Spartans were centered around their army, so you better believe their army was one of these. Otherwise, they weren't doing it right. Of course, after a few centuries of relying on their reputation (and stripping their fighter class ever downward in numbers due to their own standards of eugenics) while the forces aound them fought constantly, learned Spartan tactics, and actually got good, they suffered Badass Decay and were overcome.
• The Gurkhas. See for yourself!
• The British SAS and SBS. The first thing anyone is likely to mention about the entry exam is the fatality rate.
• The British soldiers stationed at Roarke's Drift during the Zulu War. 99 vs 4000. And the British won. Even leaving aside the fact the British had rifles and a volley discipline eminently suited to meeting charges by screaming, unarmoured Zulus, it was damn impressive. Interestingly, the commanding officer (albeit on seniority of four months) was a Badass Bookworm: Lt. John Chard, British Army Engineers. A large number of Victoria Crosses (Britain's highest honour for bravery) were awarded to individual soldiers at Roarke's Drift. The significance is as follows: there's only been 1,356 awards of the Cross since it was first created in 1856. In the entire fifty years since World War Two, it's been awarded only 13 times. There were 11 Victoria Crosses awarded at Roarke's Drift — the record for a single action.
• The Imperial Japanese Army of World War Two is one of the few armies in history to have fought "to the last man, the last bullet, the last inch of ground" on a regular basis. This was after conquering much of Asia with what are almost universally acknowledged as crappy weapons. Unfortunately tarnishing this image somewhat in Manchuria when whole detachments dropped their guns and ran away at the sight of approaching Russian airborne units.
• The relatively small Australian military similarly managed to hold out against vastly larger Japanese forces in the Second World War. And the North Vietnamese army, at the Battle of Long Tan. 108 versus 1,500, which the Australians won.
• Remember that little place that the Spartans occupied called Thermopylae? Well, in 1941, the Australian and New Zealand army did it again. It's true.
• On that note, the Papua New Guinean soldiers who fought with the Australians to resist the Japanese in WWII. Nicknamed the "fuzzy wuzzy angels", in a typically Australian display of affectionate racism.
• Current Australian SAS. They cross-train with the British (who are a Badass Army unto themselves) and have, in recent years:
  • Made life very difficult for the warlords in East Timor.
  • Participated in both Gulf Wars behind the lines, in quite unsung but significant endeavours
  • Were en route to the Solomon Islands to deal with the warlords there. The warlords heard they were on the way. They surrendered.
• The Mongol Horde of Genghis Khan.
• Nelson's Royal Navy was pretty much a Badass Fleet.
• The Roman Legions. Remember those Spartans listed above? The Romans conquered them. And turned Sparta into a tourist theme park where rich Romans could go on vacation and watch Spartan babies being tossed onto rocks for not being tough enough infants.
• The Spartans had superb discipline; the Roman Legions, by the time they faced the Spartans, had not only discipline, but also flexiblity, superb officers who had learned to lead in the Punic Wars while fighting the greatest general of the age, and reserves. While the phalanx wore itself out on the first line of a legion, the legion had two more lines in reserve. Also, from Marius forward, Roman legions that weren't stationed in a fortress carried one on their backs! Each soldier, in addition to 150 odd pounds of gear and supplies, carried part of a fort with them. They'd stop marching an hour or so earlier than other armies would, so they could BUILD A FORT from scratch! Then, before dawn the next day, they'd take the fort apart and march hundreds of miles down the road with it. Not only did that let them be better on defense than any other mobile unit, but go ahead and arm wrestle someone who can carry that much stuff while marching for 6-8 hours at a time.
• The French Foreign Legion, as well as the French Army for most of post-Roman Empire history. Their current reputation stems from the fact that their army has lost the Franco-Prussian War and WWII, as well as their National Stereotypes. Of course, the French Army's failure to defend its own territory (justifiable or not) also marks the rise of La Résistance.
• Swiss mercenaries. For hundreds of years, Swiss mercenaries were considered the best soldiers of the western world. They fought in deep columns with long pikes and halberds that served well against infantry or cavalry. After a string of victories against Austria and Italy to establish their credentials, professional Swiss soldiers became a hot commodity throughout Europe. France at the time considered it impossible to wage a war without a strong contingent of Swiss pikemen in their center. The Vatican hired Swiss mercenaries so often that they eventually created the permanent Pontifical Swiss Guard, the only Vatican guard unit that remains today. The Swiss dressed in brightly colored uniforms to identify themselves and leverage their reputation on the battlefield. Though other nations eventually imitated their tactics, the Swiss held their elite reputation for about two centuries. If you like to know why only the Vatican Swiss remain, because it's a war crime to use Swiss Mercenaries
  • No. It's not a war crime. it is prohibited by the current Swiss constitution however, with the sole exception being the Pontifical Guard.
• Ragtag bunch of Italian and French Immigrants and former slaves meet Crazy Awesome former school master who gives them red shirts. They spend the next 30 years screwing with dictatorship armies on two continents. And yes, It really did happen.
• The Filipino guerrillas led by Captain Juan Pajota in WW 2, who were instrumental in the Raid at Cabanatuan that rescued hundreds of American POWs. While the American Rangers they were helping took the Japanese POW camp, Pajota and his men held a choke point against Japanese reinforcements. Pajota and his men bore the full brunt of the Japanese counterattack and despite being heavily outnumbered they were able to hold their ground. One Filipino soldier trained in the use of a bazooka was even able to take out four Japanese tanks during the battle. The Japanese sustained 523 casualties total while the total casualties (killed and wounded) of the Filipino guerrillas and the American Rangers numbered under 30. As Cpt. Robert Prince of 6th Ranger Battalion, US Army put it:

  "The Guerrillas were our flanking protection at the Cabu River, which was no more than a mile from the camp... there was a sizable force of Japanese, but Pajota and his men just killed everything in sight that came up that river and across the bridge. They were the ones that kept this thing from being a tough deal for us."

• The Israeli Defense Forces, all branches. Surrounded on all sides by hostile countries, they've managed to defeat their foes every single time. Once, they defeated a coalition of several enemy countries in six freakin' days. For all the talk that they have numerous strategic and logistical advantages, fact is....what Badass Army doesn't?? They're generally considered some of the baddest ass soldiers in the world. Their pilots, doubly so.
• The Canadian Expeditionary Force of World War I. What was so badass about them? They took Vimy Ridge, a virtual fortress that the Germans successfully defended against both the British and the French forces, while inflicting severe casualties on them. The Canadians came along and straight up took back Vimy Ridge in roughly a week.
• Juno Beach on D-Day. The tactical situation was every bit as bad as the one faced by the Americans at Omaha. The Canadians smashed through the beach defenses in under an hour and were the only British force to actually reach their D-Day objective line inland. Joint Task Force 2. Canada's special forces unit has been everywhere, including various operations in Iraq, Haiti, and Afghanistan. More importantly though, they are known to be the only foreign unit allowed to join up with the Delta Force and Seal Team 6 in special operations in Afghanistan. And that's from what we know.
• Back in WWII, the Allies decided to create a Special Forces unit that could take out well defended German strategic targets with minimal men, maximum speed, and plausible deniability. So, they form up a battalion made up of half Americans and half Canadians, gave them custom-weapons, gave them training in the dead of the Montana winter, and sent them to fight. The Devil's Brigade kicked five kinds of Nazi ass in three short years. They also formed the basis for several post-WWII Special Forces outfits. Seriously, maybe it's time that Badass Canadian becomes a trope.
• The British army at the Battle of Balaclava: Their commanders had a major miscommunication, which led to the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade, where a bunch of guys on horse with swords charged through a valley filled with cannon fire from three sides, massacred the crew of one of the cannon groups, and charged back the same way they had come. This so impressed the military leaders that Balaclava is the only battle honor given for a strategic defeat in the history of the British army.
• There are a couple of Polish cavalry formations that make Light Brigade look like a band of amateurs. Even setting aside the famous Winged Hussars, there were the guys from Napoleon's Polish Chevaux-Légers of the Guard, who (not even the whole unit, just 125 men) ran into the Somosierra Pass and captured four batteries of cannons, causing the rout of Spanish militia of 8,000 people. Some claim that Bonaparte said "Leave it to the Poles, there's nothing impossible for them".
• The Mamluks were once a class of Islamic slave that were able to form powerful military units. So great were their abilities that they were actually granted more freedom (remember, they're slaves) than freeborn Egyptians. They went on to form the Mamluk Dynasty from 1250 to 1517.
• An 18-man US Army Intelligence and Reconnaisance platoon of the 394th Infantry Regiment, 99th Infantry Division managed to inflict somewhere around 400 - 500 German casualties during their defense near Lanzerath, Belgium. When what was left of the platoon was captured after they ran out of ammo, the German lieutenant in charge of the paratroopers that had captured the I&R Platoon demanded to know where the rest of the brigade was. Apparently, the platoon's defense was so fierce the Germans thought that it had to be at least a brigade-sized force that they had faced.
• The Sacred Band of Thebes. With them at the forefront, the Thebans -beat the Spartans-. Repeatedly. The unit was annihilated fighting to the last man when Phillip II of Macedon invaded Greece.
• The Caroleans, the army of Charles XII of Sweden. There weren't that many of them, so they compensated with strict discipline and very aggressive tactics; the musketeers were not allowed to shoot until they "could see the whites of the enemy's eyes".
• The United States Marines. From 1775 to now they still kick ass: In WW 1 while the French retreated the Germans push toward Paris in their last offensive of the war the newly arrived Marine Corps along with a small detachment of US Soldiers both fought and halted the Germans at a place called Belleau Wood. In WW 2 they fought the Japanese (Guadalcanal, Saipan, Iwo Jima and Okinawa to name a few) everywhere and nearly always won and remember they came in on the beaches no cover against manchine guns and won. Imagine D-Day for nearly every battle in the Pacific. Speaking of D-Day the USMC helped plan the Normandy Invasion. In Korea they conducted the first amphibious landing since WW 2 at a place called Inchong which was a decisive part of the Korean War, The Chinese on entering the war put a actual hit out on the First Marine Division 30,000 Marines and Soldiers and 900 Royal Marines fought 60,000 Crack Chinese in below 0 temperatures. They fought theyre way out carrying ALL the dead and wounded AND their equipment. In Vietnam they battled it out with the NVA and VC in the jungles including a battle Called Khe Sahn (6,000 Marines vs 30,000 NVA)where the Vietnamese tried to defeat them like they did 20 years before to French at Dien Bien Phu then after the Tet Offensive who cleared them out of Hue and other cities while killing all the VC who tried to smash their way into the US Embassy, yep the Marines, Who fought Hue without any air support until the very end of the battle, street by street, house by house, room by room, To today with Battles like Fallujah and right now in Helmand with the British. Semper Fucking Fi boys.
  • As if that resumé wasn't impressive enough, they even tear up pirates. The Marine Hymn commences with the line "From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli." The shores of Tripoli refers to one of the Marines' earliest campaigns against the Pirates of the Barbary Coast. Most other countries so feared the pirates they simply paid up ransoms and bribes to keep the pirates off their shipping. The United States basically said "Screw you" and sent the marines in. They wiped the pirates out.
  • It's worse then that. Other countries often paid because they didn't want to spare force needed to fulfill their sordid ambitions rather then out of fear. After Waterloo when Europe was at peace, the British also decided that the Americans had a good idea and sent a fleet to encourage honest behavior in a rather Abrubt manner.
• The United States Coast Guard provided a lot of the small boat operators who landed the Marines for those WWII battles. The only Coast Guardsman to win the Congressional Medal of Honor did so pulling 400 or so Marines off a beach under heavy Japanese fire. Plus, on their days off (I.E. when they're not busy saving Marine's asses) they save everyone else's asses, regulate shipping, guard the US's coasts and do basically every other damn thing involving US littoral waters.
  • Oh the Coast Guard is Badass! When no war is on they are at war with criminals . When they are not busy doing that they are saving lives. They don't get enough credit but they are very Badass
• Finland. One battle alone ended with Finnish forces fighting off the Soviet army, even though outnumbered more than 4:1. Final casualties: Finland, 1000 dead, 1000 wounded.

Soviet Union: 13,000-27,500 dead or missing, 2,100 taken prisoner, 43 tanks destroyed.

• The modern Greek army. They kicked the Italians asses so hard that they had to combune with the Germans

Griefer

• Many MMORPGs have this sort of problem in various forms. Ninja Looting is one of them, where the Griefer keeps stealing dropped items or landing the final blow on enemies so they can steal the EXP from other players. In a player vs player scenario, a high level player that is a Griefer may stalk and keep killing low level players who have no chance of surviving.
  • Another practice with player-killing is corpse-camping. Games with open-world Pv P like World Of Warcraft were particularly vicious for camping and then attacking players when they were already fighting a mob.
  • This practice was famously spoofed in the South Park episode "Make Love Not Warcraft".
  • Another form of a Griefer in an MMORPG is where the Griefer acts as bait towards a powerful monster, leads it to a group of players or his own party so the monster loses attention him, then runs away and watches the victims get slaughtered.
    • Leeroy Jenkins may not do this on purpose, but causes a similar amount of grief. some people will actually decide it's veeeery fun to Leeroy and screw everyone over.
    • Taken to its ultimate form in Kazzak Does Stormwind, where some Magnificent Bastard of a griefer managed to get an entire server reset.
      • In point of fact, this probably took multiple griefers working in unison. Blizzard obviously fixed, as quickly as possible, the loophole that permitted them to do it.
  • World Of Warcraft allows for a particularly mean/hilarious version involving the Warlock ability to summon people. This can be done underwater, and the warlock can buff himself and his accomplices to breathe underwater...
    • Another fun Warlock trick was related to their ability to summon demons. A couple of the most powerful demons used to require that the warlock enslave/shackle them before they would be under the warlock's control. So a lock would go to a populated area like Stormwind or Orgrimmar, summon a lvl 70 Infernal, then run like hell. Alternately they would go to a populated area like Stormwind or Orgrimmar, summon a lvl 70 Doomguard, then run like hell. Hilarity Ensues, especially among the low-level players present. This has since been "fixed" by having both the Infernal and Doomguard automatically shackled on summon, and with a short timer before they disappear.
  • While low-level characters are invulnerable to enemy attacks, low-level NPCs are not. A single high-level character can slaughter every NPC in a low-level town, preventing the low-level players from completing quests, buying new skills, using the shops or leaving the zone via the flight paths.
    • There's another odd situation involving this. In Worldof Warcraft, in low level regions (of your own side), one can choose on whether they want to be involved in Pv P or not. And of course, Griefers may choose to attack these areas. But since most players will turn Pv P-ability off for this, they simply attack the NPCs. And if a new player is passing by, and just so happens to have a healing spell, they may wish to help out these NPCs, whether they think they are actually saving them or just doing it for giggles notwithstanding. Unfortunately, simply healing an attacked NPC can make you an available for Pv P, allowing Griefers one more target for their slaughter. A slightly uncommon trick, and one that is not focused upon, but still a griefing tactic, nonetheless.
    • Apparently, lack of a Geneva Convention is actually enforced...
    • For a while, there was an exploit where a hunter could hide on a roof in Gadgetzan, send their pet to attack a low-level player and then feign death. All the guards ignore him, then go after the pet...and the player who was attacked. Even if the player did nothing to retaliate, the guards didn't care. Another popular thing was as a rogue...find a player who is afk or just low-leveled. Stick a knife in their side and vanish...watch as the player you attacked is immediately swarmed by guards despite having only been attacked. the second expansion pack has also introduced people being thrown or dragged through the air...all one needs to do is to simply use something that pushes them into the city and boom, instantly attacked and taken out by the guards who were just doing their job.
    • There are often people who are flagged for Pv P dueling each other in front of the capital cities. (Dueling is not allowed in there.) After each duel people are often reduced to only one HP sometimes. Then a member of the opposing faction runs in and then one-shots them.
    • Snowballs. There was a time in which people would intentionally grief others with an upgraded snowball that would knock people back. The factions cried because it was having an impact on a particular battleground called Alterac Valley. So of course blizzard then removed the ability to use them on the same faction because people would often just throw snowballs at players they didn't like. Another problem that still persists today are people who are away from the keyboard and jumping every couple minutes or so to get easy honor points in the battleground. during the uber snowball reign, people actually stayed behind and chucked snowballs to throw them out of the instance. (considered a public service) in their eyes, this was actually griefing them, and they were already griefing the people playing by not doing a single thing!
    • This Troper had some fun with Thunder Bluff, the balance druid spell Typhoon, and a few unfortunate duelists.
    • The toy train set most likely was implemented solely for this purpose. What does it do? It deploys a toy train set on the ground, and forces all players in the vincinity to do the /train emote for about 1 minute 40 seconds. There is a very good reason that you will get kicked from a raid when using it right before attacking a boss or anything else which requires concentration. Thankfully, one can stop the madness if somebody has the wind-up train wrecker in their inventories at the time, but if you lack such an item, tough luck.
  • This was a (too) common problem in the first Diablo game. Make all the excuses you want, there's no purpose beyond being a dick for killing a level 0 start up character.
  • Speaking of Diablo, the sequel had more than its fair share of troubles, which included Ninja Looting, running ahead and killing Act bosses (preventing lower-level players from moving on with the story, requiring them to make a new game), player killing, drawing mobs towards the party and then running, older versions of the Necromancer's Bone Wall and more. It was even worse on Hardcore, where character death was permanent.
  • Maple Story has a "Fame" stat, that is increased or decreased by other players. A whole gang of people defaming you to -20 for no reason wouldn't be such a problem, except Fame is needed for a few quests and pieces of equipment (particularly, equipment of everyone's favourite colour, Black)
• When Ultima Online was first released, it had no policing system nor Karma Meter for player killers, and once someone was dead you could loot every item on their corpse. This was exacerbated by the fact that at release it was not a game so much as a bunch of exploits strung together. The fastest way to advance was to utilize bugs and design oversights to murder players with no chance to defend themselves and take their hard earned cash and goods. If you looted their house key, it was never secure again. Not only could you loot it of all the goods they had stored there, but if they didn't destroy the house and rebuild you could keep doing it forever.
• Online first person shooter games have Griefers who cause team killing. Team killings is when the Griefer attacks his own allies in some shape or form. For example, if friendly fire is turned on, the Griefer may simply shoot or blow up his teammates and make them lose the match. Some victims may respond by attacking back, but depending on the game, killing your own allies counts as a penalty and will make the team lose either way.
  • An even worse kind of Griefer can be found on servers where anti-T King rules are automatically enforced, jumping on allies' grenades or diving in front of vehicles to get other players unfairly banned.
  • Team Fortress 2 had a whole bunch of bugs that could be exploited for this, and some tricks still work. For example, it used to be possible to get below the playable area on some maps and build sentries there that would shoot through the ground while being safe from enemy fire. Engineers can also grief by building teleports leading backwards, areas where the player gets stuck or even right into an enemy sentry.
    • Team Roomba offers the excuse, "If Valve didnt want Players to do that, Why did they put it in there?"
    • From that same game, there's also medics deliberately healing enemy spies and ubercharging snipers, blocking sniper scopes, using only melee weapons and not Cherry Tapping, sprays, bizarre sneak attacks, and even exploits allowing you to trap your whole team in the spawn.
    • On the topic of engineers, it's possible to grief one by constantly standing in front of them so that they can't build anything.
  • Another one is playing appallingly obnoxious music to block out the chat channel and undermine teamwork. The most popular is playing remixes of famous songs made with the word "BONK".
    • On a lighter note, there are entire servers dedicated to people who just want to dick around and, say, enable Spy-crab migrations, host Engineer hoedowns, or have a massive Heavy Sandvich picnic.
• Griefers may also use game mods or cheating devices to gain the upper hand in a game or simply use those things to screw everybody over, such as having infinite health or having a weapon that doesn't usually spawn in a level. These are impossible to counter unless you have the same kind of hacks they do, which by then is reducing yourself to their level.
  • Some servers exist in some games in which you pretty much have to have mods or cheating devices to even compete. Team Fortress Classic was eventually about abusing exploits and there were maybe three or four servers of Quake per year that didn't use the sets of mods that granted crazy weapons.
• Mario Kart DS and Mario Kart Wii have griefers as well. Some Griefers may camp by item boxes and attack anyone who passes by or start driving backwards and attack and ram people as they pass by. While they can be avoided, usually you cannot tell where they are until it's too late. The Wii version is slightly worse since it has co-op play for online, so you can actually have two Griefers where one item camps and attacks everyone else while he helps the other player. Since guest players do not have VR points, they can grief as much as they like without suffering any losses.
  • Just recently, several people have reported that they spotted players in Mario Kart Wii online hacking by using items like Spiny Shells or Stars at will. As stated in the summary above, since Nintendo doesn't monitor player activity online, the only thing you can do is eat your losses and quit.
  • Time Trial records are also hacked. Anyone who wants to see how the region or world champion made a best time will never be able to see the legit way thanks to people cheating.
    • Hacking in general appears to be quite an issue on DS Wifi.
• In Super Smash Brothers Brawl, there's a trick you can abuse only on Shadow Moses method. First, one of the two surrounding walls has to be destroyed. Then, a Snake has to activate his codec. Then, the Snake has to run off screen. This triggers the codec's screams of "SNAKE? SNAKE? SNAKE!!!!". However, while the scream is going on, the respawning Snake player can run off screen again, triggering the codec scream again. This can be done until the wall respawns. And until then, the entire bottom screen will be covered in a text box. It's admittingly hilarious though.
• It gets even worse in Animal Crossing: Wild World. There are hackers online who are known as seeders. Seeders are Action Replay users who plant objects that cannot be moved, such as buildings. These objects don't appear until the game gets saved. Once someone leaves the victim's town or the connection is cut by the host, the game saves and the damage is done. Seeders place such objects in front of the victim's town gate so that they can never leave to another town and prevents other visitors from coming. This is not bad compared to a seeder who will "seed" in front of the victim's house, preventing them from saving or leaving! Unless the victim has an Action Replay to undo the damage, they have to start the game all over again, wiping out EVERYTHING they worked so hard for. Then there's a seeder who does something even worse; bricking people's games! There's some item that crashes and destroys the victim's game if the game is saved. This not only nullifies everything the victim worked for, but it's also $35 down the drain. One general rule of thumb is to never let new visitors out of your sight and if you hear them drop something and don't see the item, or they just leave without saying goodbye, turn off your game so the game won't save.
  • The reason it stops booting is because the seeder added something to the town that causes the game to freeze when loading the town. Oh, and the game loads the town to show it at the title screen. Therefore, the game would lock up before showing the title screen.
  • Things get worse on the Wii version, City Folk. People have reported that hackers who visit their town have actually stolen items from the victims' houses. This can be extremely devastating if your items can't be replaced or are near impossible to find.
• In some games that have teams formed, Griefers may purposely sit around and become easy targets for the opposing team or will refuse to fight back. This can greatly annoy players who are trying to win, but can't due to someone purposely hindering the team.
  • Yet another Mario Kart Wii example. If you play battle mode online, there is a good chance that there will be at least one guy who won't move or attack. In coin battles, this won't be a problem since having coins no matter who has it is more important. For balloon battles however, this can be hair pulling. Due to the griefer just sitting around, they are easy targets for points and then it can become a battle between those attacking the sitting duck and those attacking the people trying to get easy points. The chances of this happening is much higher if there is a guest involved and are not on the same team as their partner.
  • If you play World Of Warcraft on the alliance side, simply forget any thoughts of ever winning a Warsong Gulch Pv P match for this very reason. There will always be at least one or two players on your 10 player team doing exactly this while the horde team will unneringly play with flawless teamwork that would make Sun Tzu weep with joy and pride. Getting WSG medals for your Pv P armor is simply an exercise in frustration.
    • Arathi Basin isn't much better either...
    • Basically, if you didn't put your team together beforehand from people you know personally, it's safest to assume it includes at least one of these.
  • There are pretty much griefers in every battleground.
    • People on the horde side will decide that it's very funny to cap Snowfall and watch as tne alliance immediately spawns where the horde's racing to and creates a "turtle" game that goes on for nearly an hour.
    • People in the capture-and-hold Arathi basin will purposely ignore all cries to "Leave the farm/stables alone and defend!" (The first bases that horde and alliance get respectively) and will then run over to capture the nodes they were instructed not to capture and just repeatedly run after them despite losing. The most annoying thing is when there aren't just one or two people who never get it through their heads that farm or stables is actually guarded but when there are five people who just run all over stables. There are also others who just ignore someone capping and then yell at whoever was defending them.
    • Warsong Gulch had several exploits such as the graveyard exploit, Wall-jumping, and "Behind-Silversong". They were against the rules of the game but people still did them to piss off Horde. It also doesn't help that some people still manage to pull them off when Warsong gulch has turned into a defense-game.
    • Strand of the Ancients is a battleground that is all about who can get the siege weaponry and maintain them the longest. Amazingly people don't seem to get this through their heads and will decide to sabotage the battleground and just run around the gates and hope they'll fall when they require siege weaponry and bombs to get past the walls.
  • In Guild Wars, Fort Aspenwood, Jade Quarry, and Alliance Battles have/had a good amount of leachers, who sit around just to get faction. a reporting ystem was introduced for this, how well it wortks is up for grabs for this troper at least.
• In City Of Heroes, the Pv P Griefers are called Poo Monkeys because of their tendency to verbally "throw shit" at the people they defeat in Pv P (who inevitably turn out to be the newest, least experienced, softest targets in the game). They are also usually the first to squawk in protest when wiser, more level-headed, and better Pv P players beat them at their own game.
• Second Life also has its share of griefers. Griefers will either spam the chat box or abuse "shouting" (shouts make it where anyone in the region can see what you said). They may also come in with offensive avatars such as running around with exposed giant genitals. Luckily, they can be muted so that you can't see the crap they spew or wear. However, they may leave behind objects with offensive material on them or make objects in such a way where they interfere with moving around in the region. They may also spam by generating objects over and over until the region lags and crashes. Most objects dropped by others cannot be removed unless the area has auto-return enabled or someone in charge comes in and cleans up the mess.
  • Another popular annoyance is using particle emitters to fill an area with a cloud of drifting images. This one's so prevalent that many public areas have had to disable particle effects entirely.
  • Second life: "you have two cows, but then someone hacks them and turns them into a penis-storm". Second Life has so many penises Dr. Robotnik would be in heaven.
  • And then there are weapons/objects that can trap people and prevent them from moving.
• Urban Dead has its Player-Killers (P Kers), humans acting independently of any Zombie faction, who randomly enter survivor safehouses, kill sleeping characters, and move on. PKing is actively discouraged, and its practitioners usually accorded very short shrift, as it's extremely disheartening.
  • Many consider P Kers in UD merely a third side to play: survivors vs. zombies vs. P Kers. Generators (which give buildings better search rates) and barricades (which stop zombies getting in) are also targeted by some anti-survivor players, although run-of-the-mill P Kers don't typically bother with them under normal circumstances.
• Metroid Prime Hunters had its share of griefing as well. Along with the very common hacking, some griefers would spam Combat Hall not just because it's small and doesn't have a variety of weapons, but they pick the level to glitch themselves through a wall in order to hide from players while safely attacking them. The most common way this was abused was by picking Weavel and going into his alt form to dump his lower turret half in the glitched wall while the player would control the upper half and attack people while its lower half shot at players who got too close.
• In multiplayer racing games, you'll notice a griefer right away by seeing the offender drive the wrong way or stop in a narrow place, attempting to cause collisions with proper racers.
  • Mario Kart Wii somewhat prevents this by disconnecting players who purposely drive backwards for several seconds.
• Left 4 Dead, AKA "Griefer Paradise". While much joy is gained simply by blowing teammates away at random, this gets the griefer kicked in about three nanoseconds, unless they do it right at the end of the finale and jumps on the rescue vehicle. This is not needed though, as simply playing badly is more than enough to make players spit with rage, since one person playing bad usually results in soul-crushing failure time and time again. The possibilities are endless. Favored tactics are wasting items/health, wandering off solo, failing or not even trying to rescue teammates, spamming voice commands, blocking doorways, handing them pills when they're trying to shoot things, healing them (and stopping them dead in their tracks) when they're trying to go somewhere or get away from something very fast. And then there's simply standing there spamming the laugh command as a teammate lies on the ground, dying. And then picking them up and dropping them right before they're up. And then laughing some more.
  • Another glitch occurred in the elevator section of "No Mercy." If you threw an object like a propane tank at another player while the elevator was ascending, the player would clip through the floor and plummet to the bottom of the shaft.
  • Some methods of griefing (such as healing someone when they're trying to run away) are on the official bug list and the devs are considering methods of correcting them.
  • And then there's the special infected in VS mode. Some people purposely let themselves get blown away by the survivors or they claw at the other infected players to weaken them (not counting the strategy where they weaken a boomer to near death so the next melee attack makes him explode on the survivors). Cue in raging from other infected players.
  • There's also griefers that try to pretend they are playing normally, but are not when you discover how they shoot you a bit too often during hordes or if they go and shoot everyone at the finale or in a safehouse.
  • Of course, as Yahtzee pointed out (I know you're sick of hearing about him but credit must be given), the game's Versus mode is, in a way, officially sanctioned griefing. The Zombie players are not playing to win, they are only playing to cause as much annoyance to the Survivors as possible. Legitimate, game-wrecking griefing is still possible, of course, as mentioned above.
    • Newbie players are widely hated by veteran players just because they don't know the ins and outs of the game like everyone else, including the exploits. Some of the old players have even proudly admitted that they grief new players over any stupid mistake they made.
    • And with more and more people being open on how they enjoy team killing others and the like, friends only games seem to be the only way to go.
  • The developers mentioned themselves that they changed how the melee mechanic worked BECAUSE of griefing. In playtests, many times new players would be pushed off a ledge at the start of No Mercy, therefore they had to change it so that less griefing happened. Needless to say, they found other ways.
  • And of course there's the fact that in versus mode, any player can revive a downed survivor. Including the players on the opposite team. This one can really piss off other players when they see a survivor hanging off the side of a building with a tank standing over them who, rather than smashing them off, pulls them back up.
    • Then you have griefer infected who aim to screw up any attacks you execute on survivors. Hunter players can pounce on someone who is caught by a Jockey or Smoker, which not only steals your target, but will also cause survivors to spot both you and the griefer and kill you both. A Tank player can punch Jockeys and Hunters off a survivor, killing the player and freeing the survivor while punching a survivor who is caught by a Smoker just frees them with no damage done.
  • Can you believe that your own allied AI in the game are expert griefers? They always try to heal you as you are running from zombies, throw you pills as you are shooting so you wind up eating them by mistake, jump into your line of fire. And generally just watch you get pummeled to death by the special infected. Between this and the AI Director toying with you, it's either play with friends or be hated by the game.
    • Made even worse if they decide to use first aid on you right after you used the pills in your inventory. You have enough health to survive at least another zombie attack without getting knocked down, yet they still act like your health is still near zero (which is more or less true for the actual health, as long as you don't account for the temporary health boost of the pills). Granted, you can abort these healings, but they are still annoying and a waste of resources.
    • It's worse in the sequel when the AI decide to try and heal you while you stand in Spitter goo, or heal you as you see a Charger rushing towards you.
  • And then you got people that will do nothing but spam vocal commands for the whole game, mostly people spamming the death screams. Other than leaving, the only way you could play without having your ears bleed is by muting the volume, though playing with zero sound takes away the immersion of the game. Valve made a patch for L4D2 that disabled custom voice binds so now there are less vocal spamming.
  • Left 4 Dead 2 seems to have unintentionally added more ways for people to grief. You have Gnome Chompiski in the Dark Carnival campaign that has to be carried all the way to the escape chopper in the finale in order for people to get the achievement. People who seek to grief others protecting the gnome for the achievement will try to toss the gnome to a place where it can be stuck and can't be recovered, forcing everyone start all over again if they want to try again. One of Valve's weekly mutations had a glorified version of the gnome carrying (Last Gnome on Earth) where you can't advance to the next map unless the gnome is with the players in the safe house. While Valve did think ahead and made it where trying to toss the gnome would just result it falling straight down, it didn't stop people from trying to drop it off the bridge in The Parish's finale or drop it out the window in the start of Dead Center or even dropping it in the river during Hard Rain's finale. Since you can't advance without the gnome, it's either restart or quit the game and find another lobby.
    • And then there's Scavenge mode, where the object of the game is to fill the generator or car with more cans of gasoline than the other team as they get pummeled by special infected players. Griefers would be quite happy to shoot the cans, which causes them to explode and catch on fire and the fire would spread to other cans and set them alight if they were close enough. This lead to many of a hair pull since it takes time for a destroyed can to respawn and the team can't afford to waste time or the round ends once time expired.
  • There's a certain exploit in Left 4 Dead 2 that can cause everyone's game to crash. Usually, someone will keep swapping between melee weapons and dual pistols in a way where they can make duplicate pistols. If done over and over again, the mountain of pistols can cause lag and eventually freeze or crash the game if more keep getting spawned. However, since it takes a while to actually pull it off, people rarely doe this.
• The Matrix Online, at least on the Recursion server, was prone to what were called 'Flavor of the Month' factions: someone would start a faction which would swell to ginormous proportions because the frequently unscrupulous leaders would recruit every new player in sight, making it hard for any other faction to recruit new members. Within a month, the ginormous faction tended to collapse under its own weight. These factions also tended to try and win more members by smearing other, existing factions in the same organization and/or tried to make a name for themselves by being obnoxious at official events or player events: Things like spamming area chat with idiotic phrases, breaking the rules of tournaments on purpose, disrupting roleplaying events, and hitting on the canon characters (played by the game developers) were favorite tactics.
• Ryan Davies in Uncharted 2. Skip to about 21:40.
• Star Craft had a troll calling himself (among many online personas) "The Amazing Dildoni". While running the usual methods of griefing by backstabbing his allies or deliberately killing a critical NPC unit, (all the while spamming obscenities at anyone unfortunate enough to be in his game), he would often trick newbie players into unintentional griefing themselves. I distinctly recall one map where in a defense style Helms Deep simulation, he shouts out "Drop the oil NOW!" to the newbie defender, who listening to the guy, wipes out half his own team.
• Let's not forget real life...People often jump all over opportunities to sabotage their team from winning a game of sports. Especially in School Gym classes where performance on a game may actually affect your grade.
• Time Splitters and Unreal Tournament (especially the vehicular one), despite the ease and semi-encouragement of such, does not receive very many online griefers, likely due to some forms of griefing being encouraged by how gameplay works, and a majority of the people playing for shits n' giggles anyway. If you can't make them rage, then griefing simply isn't fun. Also, the only legit forms of griefing are very tedious and obvious (joining a kills/deaths game and leaping onto your own explosions or into pits for example.) And sometimes it works to a team's advantage, for example superweapons only spawn one at a time. So by holding onto and not using a superweapon, you help the team anyway since the opposition no longer has access to it, either!
• Fat Princess griefers like to throw bombs inside their own castle, killing several teammates and sometimes wrecking the castle door that the Workers just used the last 3 units of wood to fix. Also, on the Sugar Cove level, they'll exploit a bug to place one of the princesses on top of the mountain where other players can't jump, rendering the game Unwinnable.
• Any game with a capture-the-flag mode invites griefers to grab the flag and just run around aimlessly with it, refusing to score.
  • Halo 2 was especially bad on Roadworks. Flag guy jumps ontop of the Banshee, Banshee gently hovers up to a rather high ledge and the two of them sit up there, well out of range of any grenades or rocket launchers.
• Haze had a decent online co-op mode, except for friendly fire. It became nearly impossible to play, because you'd always wind up with someone on your team blasting you in the face. The fun part was when I blast back at the teamkiller, and someone else shoots me thinking I'm a team killer, then the teamkiller kills THAT PERSON. Friendly fire doesn't belong in online co-op.
• Ragnarok Online has the Dead Branch and Bloody Branch items, which summon random mobs of any level and MVP monsters (a.k.a. That One Boss of many varieties). People would use these For the Evulz at portals where low leveled players trained, thus practically cutting off passage and leveling in the map until a higher level player (or party for the MVP) comes along and exterminates them. However, using Branches is recorded in a log often resulting in bans.
  • This troper had used a variant of this griefing tactic on servers which was untraceable by the mods. It involved the Hylozoist Card attatched to an accessory. What the Hylozoist Card did was (aside from a set bonus) give a very small chance to transmute monsters into various other monsters (including MV Ps and autonomous and deadly versions of typically non-lethal plants) every time they are hit by the player. This troper, using a perfect dodge and agility build of the Assassin Cross class, began using AoE skills set to their lowest level, Throw Stone and barehanded fisting to mass produce MV Ps, tough and weird monsters in maps where they were not supposed to be such as newbie areas and areas where there were persons who were idle farming (Orc Dungeon). It became an unofficial event when people began to notice the chaos, whines and complaints of newbies. It got bad enough that the mods of the server had to reset maps (that they found to be "infected" with transmuted monsters) and made an announcement to the whole server, aimed at this troper, that he would be banned if he was found... Meaning that they didn't know who did it at all. This troper stopped doing it out of respect for the administration and because it was getting late. In retrospect, this troper felt he was doing the server a favor by bringing rare and exotic monsters to easily accessible places, were usually easier to kill (as they had less health due to initial damage carried over percentage wise) and had the chance to drop rare loot typically not available in those areas.
• A common way to grief in Killing Floor is to weld a door. Welded doors can't be opened by merely pressing the use key, you have to unweld them first. While this can sometimes be unintentionally helpful, as it redirects the specimens or at the very least alerts you that there are specimens at the door, desperately fleeing from a Fleshpound that's pissed off at you, only to round a corner that would lead to freedom and find that the door is welded instead of merely shut is not a fun experience.
  • This can bite back, however, when the griefers themselves get caught in their own traps when they forget they actually welded the door during a previous wave. Hilarity Ensues.
• People that Rage Quit in a game can also do this to grief other players. Some games may end immediately if there aren't enough people in a game or team. Other games will also end of the person that quits was running a local sever because since he is the host and if he goes, the whole game goes.
• This was a rather common problem in Resident Evil Outbreak. In the original game, only one player could be Kevin or anyone with his character build, so griefers would always take him, as he was one of the strongest and fastest characters. The griefer would then run and barricade people out of safe areas, hold doors so they couldn't escape the zombies, hoover up all the ammo and health, and if you were injured, pick you up and carry you into a ravenous mob. Luckily, the game had such a small player base and hard limits on the names you could make that it became a simple task to just write down all the griefers' names and refuse to join their games.
• Combat Arms is a griefer paradise due to its nonexistent anti-hack software. It's not uncommon to be killed by an invincible, unkickable bloke flying around shooting rapid fire airstrikes out of his combat knife. Or an aimbot that headshots your entire team every three seconds. Or a guy who teleports your hitbox right in front of him every time he swings his knife, leading to a totally unavoidable one hit kill from anywhere in the map.
• The Jump Ultimate Stars online 'random'-mode has become a combination of Griefing and "Stop Having Fun" Guys. How? Well...first, the vast majority of people who go just stand around to farm gems. They run around not doing anything for the entirety of a match, then just do nothing during Sudden Death (this gives everyone a small amount of every J-Gem around). Anyone who so even touches another character gets ganged up on like Julius Caesar. On top of that, said players stick to using extremely overpowered characters with extremely hard-to-dodge attacks. Just one is a problem, but try dealing with three. On top of that, they'll have The Big Three equipped—the three most overpowered support attacks around, which are impossible to defend against. All of this is exacerbated by the fact that said players also use The Black Koma, a glitch-koma gained only by hacking that grants you infinite SP. The only way you can play Jump is by playing against people you know in the community (i.e., from forums).
• Mitadake High. Random Killers. Uuuuurgh.
• MineCraft griefers are especially annoying since multiplayer servers are all about creating giant or decorative structures. You can spend hours or even days on your secret base or tower, only to have it be destroyed in minutes by a griefer. Luckily, there are several ways to take care of them, including placing blocks only ops can destroy around the spawn point, taking the server offline overnight, getting an op from another time zone, manually approving users, and using a report system.
• Red Faction has/had/will have (the game server is somewhat erratic) a recurring problem with this. The system that the game used to allow for fast play even on dial-up connections meant that there was no reliable "rules-check." This allowed Griefers to join a game in progress with modded weapons or mods that duplicated the effects of cheat codes. The least invasive version of this was the "nuke," in which the player would mod the Fusion Launcher's blast radius to massive levels, turning the entire level into a massive crater (this was least bad because it could only be done once per game, as everyone woiuld simply spawn and die.) A more annoying version was enabling the "fly" and "noclip" cheats, grabbing the flag and hiding it in a wall, while killing everyone with invisible homing rockets that fly through walls.
• Puzzle Pirates has a solution to this. Each ship must appoint one player as the captain, and among other duties he can make griefers Walk the Plank, removing them from the ship and depriving them of any loot for the current mission. Just make sure you've got a good captain . . .

For the Evulz

• Serial killers in general, especially the subset known as "thrill killers." A thrill killer is literally into murder for the hell of it. There are other subsets, with more Freudian motivations, but thrill killers are possibly the most terrifying kind - at least you can kind of relate to a former abuse victim. More examples follow below.
• The infamous Zodiac killer in the '70s. While at least one of the messages he left behind claimed that he was killing people in order to make them his slaves when he dies and is reborn in "paradice", the prevailing opinion among investigators has been that he was being intentionally misleading, that he was far more intelligent and educated than some of the letters he sent made him appear, and that he was killing simply because he believed he could do so and get away with it.
  • Dennis Rader, the BTK killer, seems to have had similar beliefs.
• Likewise, Mr Starkweather.
  • They declared me unfit to live said into that great void my soul'd be hurled/ They wanted to know why I did what I did/ Well sir I guess there's just a meanness in this world.
    — Bruce Springsteen, "Nebraska"
• John Allen Muhammad is on record saying that he did his crimes "for the sheer terror of it."
  • Although there has been suggestion that it was part of a crazy plan to murder his ex-wife and make her look like just another victim of a serial killer so the crime couldn't be traced to him.
• More people know that Brenda Ann Spencer had no more reason for her crimes than "I don't like Mondays" than know who she is or what she did, thanks to The Boomtown Rats. For context, she used a rifle to shoot a bunch of elementary school students and other random people from her bedroom window, killing two men and injuring eight children. She later professed to actual motives in the Freudian Excuse category, but all indications are that she's just making this up to try to excuse herself from her actions, and she was just a good-old-fashioned sociopath. She also claimed to have been on PCP at the time.
• Anonymous, a faceless army of Internet trolls with minimal hacking expertise out to cause grief "for the lulz". The bulk of their antics are meanspirited but ultimately-harmless pranks (Your Mileage May Vary depending on whether a given prank actually is harmless how seriously YOU take the Internet, you liberal nazi), but they did put flashing strobe-type graphics on an epilepsy website at one point. That said, characterizing Anonymous as a whole this way is tricky business, given just how many people are a part of it — members of "Anonymous" have also helped track down and stop child molesters and protested Scientology, although in some cases, this could be interpreted as simply taking out their impulses on Acceptable Targets.
• Cheyenne Cherry the 17 year old girl who threw a kitten into an oven because she doesn't like them, and she thought it would be funny. What the hell?
  • In a similar vein, the two guys who posted a video of themselves lighting a cat on fire on the internet, eventually leading to the YTMND fad "NEDM", "Not Even Doom Music" can make setting a cat on fire cool justify voting five for lighting a cat on fire.
• The Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs, also known as The Ukrainian Thrill Killers, are a group of three young Ukrainian men who killed 21 people at random, filming and/or photographing most of their crimes. They claimed to have an interest in making snuff films, and even a prospective buyer for their films, but there's a strong possibility that's just an excuse, and not a very good one at that.
• Robert Hansen, who played Hunting the Most Dangerous Game with his victims.
• Serial killer Edmund Kemper claimed that he killed his grandparents "just to see what it felt like".
  • This is referenced in the The Silence of the Lambs, when Jame Gumb did much the same thing.
  • Ted Bundy said the same thing when asked why he chose to take a bite out of one of his many female victims.
  • Robert Berdella once offered a similar explanation ("to see what would happen") when asked why he tried gouging out the eyes of one of his victims.
• Aaron Joseph Streets, who believed he was going to prison, figured he may as well go down for something significant and bashed and murdered a defenseless old man. When caught by police he talked about the high he got from the murder, better than any drug to take someone's life away.
• Cats and bottle-nosed dolphins tend to kill, and sometimes play with the corpses, for fun. In the latter's case some males even rape for fun.
• Leopold and Loeb murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks just to see if they could commit the perfect crime. They couldn't.
• 15-year-old Alyssa Bustamante murdered her 9-year-old neighbor Elizabeth Olton and buried her in a shallow grave that had been dug a week earlier. The reason? She wanted to know what it felt like to kill someone. Alyssa later admitted to digging two graves, leading police to theorize that she had initially intended to kill her twin brothers.
• Many dictators follow this trope. The most notorious example of recent times is Saddam Hussein who ran what amounted to “a pornographic theme park”. Saddam and his goons were always thinking up new ways to gruesomely murder people for no apparent reason and not only made family members watch, but made them applaud. If the family members were not available at the time the event was recorded and the video delivered to the family. Wow.
  • “There was nothing in the realm of torture and humiliation he didn't try. You can look up what Human Rights Watch (…) has produced about Iraq for many many years and you'll read stuff that will freeze your blood, you won't be able to get it out of your mind what it was like to be a prisoner in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. It was almost like a theme park.” – Radio interview with Christopher Hitchens.
• Mary Bale, a woman recently and widely vilified in the UK for being caught on camera stroking a cat before dumping it in a wheelie bin and walking away. Apparently it was supposed to be a joke.
• The Hungarian AVO, later renamed AVH, as well as the Romanian Securitate, now known as the SRI, were primarily drafter from people like this. The SRI that exists even now, however, is little more than a bogey man by now
• Oftentimes, those who commit random acts of violence are doing so out of boredom. One need only reflect on the notorious "wilding" case in New York City in 1989. The story goes that a large group of young men went on a spree of wanton violence throughout Central Park that culminated in a "gang-bang" on a female jogger; the woman was raped repeatedly, bludgeoned with various blunt objects, and stabbed in the skull several times, experiencing permanent brain damage as a result. When the boys were arrested and brought to the nearest precinct, they did not seem remorseful about what they had done, concerned about the fate of their victim, or even worried about what their punishment would be! When asked to account for their actions, one of the boys said: "It was something to do. It was fun." Many years later, it came to light that these young men weren't even the ones responsible for the assault and rape, and had falsely confessed! One can only imagine that they were so desperate for attention that they were willing to go to extreme lengths to get it.
• In a mild example, crossing over with Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat, the 2007 New England Patriots were caught filming the hand signals of opponents in the first week of the season. They went on to break several NFL records, win 18 of the 19 games they played, the only loss being Super Bowl 42 to the New York Giants, and have won 63 of the 78 games they've played since the start of that season. As Cracked put it, when comparing a Russian fencing team who were in a similar situation, even if you vastly outclass your opponents in pretty much every way, cheat anyway just for the thrill of it.
• The above premise would also have to apply to professional wrestler Kurt Angle, at least when he's a heel. Even though he's probably the most superior athlete to ever compete in WWE, he cheats when he wrestles anyway because he's just that much of a Jerkass.

Five Bad Band

• Nazi Germany's Cabinet: and the only actual example of Real Life
  • Big Bad - Adolf Hitler
  • The Dragon - Heinrich Himmler
  • The Evil Genius - Joseph Mengele, a typical Mad Scientist, and Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda
  • The Brute(s) - Hermann Goring, and Karl Dönitz
  • The Dark Chick - Eva Braun
  • And Let's also mention the countries of World War II

    • Big Bad - Nazi Germany
    • The Dragon - Imperial Japan
    • The Brute - Romania, provided most of the troops, which were used to force open enemy lines; also regarded as the craziest after Germany and Japan
    • The Evil Genius - Italy, as whole Fascism started in Italy
    • The Dark Chick(s) - Bulgaria, Hungary, and Croatia

Asshole Victim

• The Qing Empire, the predecessor to Red China. It spent the last century or so of its lifetime being the Butt-Monkey for the European Great Powers, especially Britain and France. It was a notable victim of "gunboat diplomacy", as the British were once able to quiet the whole of China by simply dispatching a single warship. The lucrative opium trade from the British Raj (India) left masses of Han Chinese addicted to the drug and created a deficit in Chinese trade. The Qing administration intervened, and the result was the Opium Wars, notoriously one-sided affairs which actually exacerbated the problem. With the failure of the Boxer Rebellion and the looting of Beijing by the Eight-Nation Alliance (USA, Britain, France, Italy, Japan, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia), the Qing dynasty limped on until the empire collapsed and the monarchy was overthrown. A poor victim of imperialist aggression? Not quite. It is hard to sympathise with the Qing government when one realises that it was corrupt, arrogant, anti-reformist and mostly responsible for its own troubles. The Qings were a Ur-Example of Small Name, Big Ego. The Qing emperors - long used to being the dominant power in East Asia - considered themselves to "rule over all the heavens". In 1793, the fledging British Empire attempted to woo the Chinese into an alliance. They sent a delegation to Beijing, which included gifts of splendid European arts and technologies. The Qing emperor rejected the delegation and demanded that the British King personally come to the Chinese court and pay homage to him. The British subsequently dropped all attempts. Foreign residents were treated like second-class citizens and foreign countries had to establish their own special ports just to gain access to the Chinese market. The Opium Wars were as much caused by Qing intransigence as British imperialism, as the Qing regime utterly rejected free trade and believed it should be under their control. The Boxer Rebellion, while sparked by genuine grievances, also involved a lot of xenophobia and sectarianism, with the massacring of Christians and foreigners and the sieging of embassies. The Dowager Empress Cixi backed the rebels, with the aim of purging China of foreign influence, and so made the inevitable reprisals even more brutal. Overall, resistance to reform, obsolete ideas on trade and an utterly atrocious approach to international relations sealed the Qing dynasty's demise. Since it's successors were so terrible (the ROC was a military dictatorship for several decades, the PRC is Communist People's Republic of Tyranny), it tends to get a Historical Hero Upgrade.
  • Chinese people resent the Qing dynasty for being assholes (both to their "own" people, and the West) and weakening China to begin with, but don't see that as a reason to absolve the West of their own numerous evils — disregarding the fact that the Qing rulers were but a few asshole victims in a country of millions of legitimate ones. The Qing dynasty was established by the ethnic-minority Manchus, who repressed and disarmed the majority Han for fear of revolt. The silly front-half-shaven haircut seen on "Chinamen" in the Wild West was an imposition of Manchu law on ethnic Han, the infraction of which was punishable by death. This is one of the hidden reasons that the hair chopping scene in Shanghai Knights is so significant.
• Ken Rex McElroy was, by all accounts, a king-sized asshole who threatened and intimidated everyone in his small Missouri town. He was murdered in broad daylight in front of 40+ witnesses, but not a single one beyond his wife would corroborate her account. Reportedly, more than one of them told the police "He needed killing."
  • Shades of Lord Winder, there (see Literature, above).
• Benito Mussolini, former dictator of Italy, who masterminded a bloody invasion of Ethiopia, and disastrously led Italy into the World War II. The war resulted in five years of ruination for Italy. Towards the end of April 1945, whilst attempting to flee the country, he was apprehended by partisans, along with his mistress and several members of his cabinet. Most were executed without legal process; the bodies of Mussolini and his mistress were hung upside-down from the forecourt of a local petrol station the next day, to be spat on by passer-by and pecked at by crows. In theory Mussolini's execution was murder; in practice, no one was in a great rush to apprehend the killers.
  • Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu and his wife Elena went through a similar execution once their rule was overthrown in 1989.
• When Allied troops liberating the Dachau prison camp at the end of WW 2, many of the camp guards were massacred while attempting to surrender, or after having surrendered. Some reports state that the prisoners themselves were given the opportunity to take revenge on their former tormentors, and estimates of German deaths in the events, known as the "Dachau Massacre", range from around 50 to several hundred. Although the events were revealed by investigation and the US military even considered the court martial of the commanding officers, General Patton (who was in charge of the area of the time and was known for his disgust at the concentration camps) dismissed the charges.
  • Related to the above, after the massacre of Canadian prisoners in Normandy and the later one of American prisoners at Malmedy, it was noted that Canadian and American troops tended to have fewer SS troops survive battles with them.
    • As a general rule, survival percent of SS troops on Eastern front was about zero.
    • There are stories that when the Jewish Brigade was heading through conquered Germany, a nazi would hide in a building and a Jewish soldier would go in after him and kill him. The guard would conspicuously not notice.
• Li Shiming, a local Communist Party official many Chinese villagers in Xiashuixi say made their lives hell by seizing land, extorting money, and bullying people for years. In fact, more than 20,000 people from the coal-mining area petitioned a court for a lenient sentence for Li's killer, whom they considered a local hero. Didn't help that he and his one-party system ran their district like personal fiefdoms.
• Charlie White, an elderly Texas millionaire. He was a prolific philanderer and a nasty drunk who viciously abused his family, both verbally and physically. When questioned by reporters, most people who knew him readily said that he was an asshole who deserved to die, and some even admitted that they had considered doing it themselves. His son lived a life of being constantly berated and slapped around by Charlie; Charlie even had sex with his son's girlfriends and propositioned one for a threesome with his own son. It's hard to blame the son after he finally snapped and did him in.
• This is the principle behind Jury Nullification.
  • A principle. Juries will also nullify if they think the law that was broken is unjust.
  • I would put it this way: the jury will not convict if they think application of that law in this case is unjust.
• Jeffrey Dahmer, serial killer, rapist and cannibal, was murdered in prison by a fellow inmate. The perpetrator allegedly said that he (the perp) was Jesus. Comedian Dennis Miller quipped on his now-defunct talk show Dennis Miller Live that "if 'Christ' was an elected position, this guy would be the frontrunner."
• On the reality series The First 48, it frequently gets lampshaded by the detectives involved that often the murder victims are killed as the result of drug deals gone bad, revenge for a crime carried out by the victim earlier, and sometimes as straight-up self-defense.
• Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll. Mob enforcer and loan shark responsible for kidnappings, murders, tortures and even the death of a 5 year old. Gunned down by a hitman at age 23
• Ernesto Miranda. Burglar and serial rapist and kidnapper of women - one of whom was mentally disabled - most famous for the court case which led to compulsory Miranda warnings
• Dutch Schultz a mass murderer and torturer was murdered while urinating in a restaurant
• Gangster Carmine Galante attempted to murder a policeman, injured a 6 year old in a shoot out, tested his heroin on unwilling kidnap victims and was the Underboss of a major crime family was - like Dutch Schultz - murderered in a restaurant
• Boxer Trevor Burbick who was murdered in Jamaica with a hatchet was a convicted rapist who threatened his manager with a gun
• "Mad Sam" De Stefano (known as The Marquis de Sade of the Mafia for his torture techniques) was a sociopath who murdered his own brother and laughed about it later, forced his wife to have sex with another man and generally got great pleasure from rape and torture. He was too extreme even for the mafia who eventually ordered a hit on him.
• Willie "The Wimp" Stokes who ran a $50m drugs empire in Chicago. His murder is unsolved but his father was rumored to have ordered it
• Mafia enforcer Anthony Spilatro who was the inspiration for the Joe Pesci character in Casino
• Loan shark and hitman Earl "Hymie" Weiss survived several assassination attempts but was eventually killed in a hit organized by none other than Al Capone
• Eugene Terre Blance founder of the White Supremacist terrorist group Afrikaner Resistance Movement and convicted violent criminal (who permanently disabled a security guard) was bludgeoned to death by two of his employees over a wage dispute in 2010
• Euronymous. He was an admirer of such people as Josef Stalin and Pol Pot, and whose entire philosophy was essentially For the Evulz. There's a reason why there is a campaign to free his murderer, not that the person who killed him was much better.
• Child killers/molesters are often targeted in prison. The public tends not to care.
  • A prominent example is Steven Barker, best known for torturing and murdering his 17 month old stepson and raping a two year old, who had boiling water thrown in his face. The other inmates applauded as he was attacked, and the comments on articles about the attack tend to go along the lines of, "He deserved it and worse."
• Osama bin Laden. Not much more needs to be said.
• Brutal Northern Ireland terrorist Lenny Murphy was gunned down by the Irish Republican Army. It is widely believed that his own organization, the Ulster Volunteer Force actually tipped the IRA, their archenemies off to Murphy's habits because his actions were so brutal they horrified his own side.
• Li Shiming]
• Lev/Leon Trotksy organized the overthrow of the Provisional Government of Russia, the surrender of large swaths of Eastern Europe to Germany, a ruthless and obscenely cutthroat war against everybody and anybody that opposed the Bolshevik state, and attempts to *export* the revolution abroad by force of arms. So when he was eventually exiled and tracked down to Mexico before suffering a fatal case of Icepick to the Head as a result of an Evil Versus Evil struggle for power with Joseph Stalin, well.... let's just say that his passing was not exactly mourned by most that had served under or near him.

Attention Whore

• People aside, pet cats know the way to get your attention if and when they require it. The explanation behind newspaper centrefold cats and laptop saboteur cats is this. If these fail, they'll be likely to simply climb on your lap, wipe your face with their tail, and mewl until you stop ignoring them.
• Pretty much any young child under 5 or 6. It gets even worse when a younger sibling comes into the picture and they sense that they aren't in the spotlight anymore.

Beware The Nice Ones

• The Semai of Malaysia are an anthropological rarity and a good example of this trope. They are a society with almost no interpersonal violence, with words for warfare not even existing in their language. During a communist insurrection in Malaysia, some Semai were involved in the fighting and they became effective fighters, almost fanatical ones. The Semai who fought described themselves afterwards as "drunk on blood," and they surprised themselves by their behavior, although they weren't upset by it.
• George Carlin said that the tendency of people to say "It's the quiet ones you gotta watch", seemed, to him, "like a very dangerous assumption."

  "I will bet you anything that while you're watching a quiet one, a noisy one will fucking kill you! Suppose you're in a bar and one guy's sitting over on the side reading a book, not bothering anybody; another guy's standing up at the front with a machete, banging it on the bar, saying "I'll kill the next motherfucker who comes in here!" Who ya gonna watch?"

  • I dunno... I mean, this guy is just calmly reading a book when there's a raving lunatic slashing around with a machete in the same room? I wouldn't piss ''him'' off, that's for sure.
• CS Lewis once pointed out that the ideal Medieval knight was "Fierce in the field and meek in the hall." Of course it really didn't come out that way but that is why we call them ideals.
• The Shaolin Monks are a prime example of this trope; they were peaceful till a group of bandits pushed them to the edge. Then they developed their own weapons and brand of Kung Fu- elegant, graceful, generally defensive- and also able to paralyze, maim, and kill in some of the most horrifyingly gruesome ways imaginable.
• Reinhard Heydrich was born to artistic parents, and was by all accounts a shy, sensitive child. His mildly Semitic features did not go down well in early-20th century Germany, and he was frequently bullied as a child. From young adulthood onwards he transformed himself into a dashing naval officer and womaniser, and later climbed the ranks of Hitler's SS, becoming the kind of Nazi official that Nazi officials were frightened of. The general competence of "the blond beast" gave the Allies nightmares that he might succeed Hitler. Upon his assassination in 1942 the world sighed with relief; all except for the populations of the Czech villages of Lidice and Le�?, who were murdered in reprisal. "The towns were burned and the ruins leveled."
• Heydrich's former Navy commander, admiral Wilhelm Canaris. He was a rather frail, mild-mannered, soft-spoken man, caring father and fond of dogs and music. He was also the head of German military intelligence. During WWI he managed to escape from a prisonners camp in Chile, traveled to Buenos Aires mostly on foot and went back to Germany to start a career as a spy. He's known to have bypassed the clauses concerning submarines in the Treaty of Versailles by asking the Japanese to build them and then sell them to the German fleet. Well done. During WWII, he tricked Heydrich, Himmler AND Hitler into believing he was supporting them (while doing the exact opposite), and was at the very least aware of all plots against Hitler, and lent a hand in some. It didn't end well for him. Had some CrowningMomentOfFunny lightning his cigars with Hitler's orders.
• Steve Irwin. One of the nicest guys you could ever hope to have met, but you did not ever brag about abusing animals in his hearing distance, ever.
• Members of the Religious Society of Friends (more often known as Quakers) are defined (in part) by their testimony against war. You'd imagine they'd be the nicest, kindest, most docile and timid opponents you'd meet. But some Quakers have been pushed too far, and have taken up the sword, sometimes with spectacular results.
  • Gen. Nathaniel Greene was, by the end of the Revolutionary War, second only to George Washington on the roster of American Generals. Leading troops in almost every major victory and defeat under Washington in the northern theater, Greene was sent to command the Southern army towards the end of the war. There he "lost" three battles in a row, all Pyrrhic victories for the British. They had to give up Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina to the Americans. A Quaker ended up forcing the British to evacuate the lower half of their American colonies. Beware the Nice Ones, yes indeed.
  • Edwin Stanton was a Quaker, and Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of War. A capable administrator, unfailingly honest, ...and a SCARY sonufabitch if you were to run afoul of him. Spies and subversives were treated... harshly.
  • Gen. Isaac Peace Rodman joined the Union Army at the start of the Civil War, a lowly captain. One year and three months later, he died commanding a division of soldiers (a very speedy advancement of four ranks due to his competence and bravery), at the Battle of Antietam.
  • Gen. Smedley Butler won two Medals of Honor. Fought in China. Fought in Mexico. Fought in Central America. Fought in Haiti. Fought in WWI. Fought mobsters in Philadelphia as Director of Public Safety. Then he wrote a book in the 30's about how he hated fighting, called "War Is A Racket" (essentially picking a public relations fight with Wall Street, Big Oil, and Big Banks). There's no doubt he hated fighting... but neither is there any doubt that he was really good at it, no matter who the opponent.
    • All of the above came about when individual Quakers got pushed to violence. The group as a whole, while remaining nonviolent, also has a pretty impressive track record when pushed too far: helped end slavery (John Woolman), taught Martin Luther King how to win a fight without shooting (Bayard Rustin), and got women the right to vote (Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony). Basically if you make them angry, you'll probably survive... but you'll probably still lose eventually.
  • Consider these when next opposed with a Quaker. They're not always the happy, kindly gent on the oatmeal drum.
  • There's an old Quaker saying, "I would not harm thee for all the world, friend, but thou art standing where I am about to shoot."
• Leonard Cheshire. A mild-looking slim and bookish young man who trained to become a bomber pilot in the RAF. After two full tours of duty in bombers (already beating the odds) he commands the elite bomber 617 squadron post-Dambusters raid. Using new methods and equipment and with his aircraft specially modified, his small unit destroyed with 12,000 and 22,000lb bombs many pinpoint hardened targets in Occupied Europe, including V2 launch complexes, the Battleship Tirpitz, concrete U-Boat pens, railway and canal viaducts, tunnels and bridges, and then developed methods to precision-mark targets from low level during raids. Eventually, he was flying a small single-engined Mustang fighter into a target in the moments before the attack began, putting marker flares precisely on the pin-point target. Awarded the Victoria Cross for continuous extraordinary leadership and success, he devoted the rest of his life to running the charity The Cheshire Homes; providing housing and help for the disadvantaged and disabled. Not really 'one who went berserk', but a man whose methods are now a normal feature of modern warfare with 'smart' precision-attack weapons, and who got back in his box when no longer needed.
• The Swiss. Yes, the Swiss, of chocolate-and-clock fame. Swiss mercenaries were known for their consistent record of victory and refusal to take prisoners. The kings of France thought it impossible to go to war without Swiss pikemen as the core of their infantry. Eventually, using Swiss mercenaries was declared a war crime and today the only Swiss troops you tend to hear about are the ones who make up the Vatican's Pontifical Swiss Guard. Yeah, these are the guys who have been trusted to guard the Pope for five hundred years and counting. Do not screw with.
  • The reason they're neutral is that for hundreds of years no one has been stupid enough to start a fight with them.
  • That one blade on a Swiss Army Knife that you could never work out what it's for? You Do Not Want To Know.
  • There was a story this troper recalls, which takes place back when rifles could fire five shots. It goes like this:
    • A German commander and Swiss commander are chatting. The German says, "In 24 hours, I could summon up 25 million troops" (or something to that effect). The Swiss nods and says, "In that time, I could call up 5 million." The German laughs. "And then what?" The Swiss simply replies, "And then my men would line up, empty their rifles, and go home for dinner."
  • They also froze out several enemies, much like the Russians.
• The Finns. Who are so nice a people. Until they find Russians in their Fearsome Forests.
  • People, who according to their own folk saying once had the custom of going to meet their neighbour with an axe if they saw a chip of wood floating down the river.
• Wisconsin. Nice state that also happens to have a large portion of the most infamous serial killers in American history.
• Google: A company with the motto, "Don't Be Evil," has a laid back office atmosphere, entertaining April Fools jokes, annnnnnd, has access to most of the information on the planet? It is no wonder that you have some people thinking that they could take over the world in just a few mouse clicks.
• Human beings in general. Present your average person, chosen at random, with a credible threat to that which they care about, be the threat real or imagined, and chances are good they could become a raging berserker. There's a reason nearly all of the examples under Mama Bear are humans.
• Just as much as humans, dogs and wolves in particular fit this trope. Almost all canines have enough of a social order that, under the right circumstances, even the most territorial dogs and wolves can usually be approached by a human. But even the most friendly and tame canine you have ever seen is probably perfectly willing (and most are surpisingly capable- see their entry under Badass Adorable) to rip you limb from limb if they catch you trying to harm anyone they care about. Of course, there are those that avert or subvert this trope by being perpetually timid or just tearing you apart for the heck of it, these are not the majority.
• If you did not know of him prior to meeting him, you might think that Simo Hayha was a amiable but quiet man who seemed to have suffered an unfortunate facial injury in his past. However, bear in mind that he was a Finnish sniper in World War 2, is in the running for 'single most lethal man to ever exist', and had a body count somewhere in the area of 700 kills. When Russia invaded Finland, Simo Hayha was a farmer who had already served his mandatory year of military service. The ensuing Winter War saw him cause so many Russian casualties that entire counter-sniper teams and whole artillery barrages were deployed to try and stop him...to no appreciable effect, especially when he ended up sniping his counter-snipers. When he was finally hit by enemy fire—in the face, no less—he still managed to kill the man who'd failed to kill him. Those who met Simo Hayha later in life tell that he was actually quite a nice and talkative fellow, but undeniably skilled and enough of a terror to his foes to warrant them calling him "The White Death".
• Canada. You know that Nice Country up north who's overly polite and says "eh"? a lot? Look up Canada's accomplishments in World War I and World War II. German troops feared meeting Canucks With Chinooks more than anyone else in the Western front. And if that didn't convince you, don't talk bad about hockey to a Canadian. Just don't.
• Swing Out Sister's lead vocalist Corrine Drewery is known to be soft spoken and generally friendly. However in an interview, she admitted that around "once a year", she can get pissed off enough (her most notable Berzerk Button being rude taxi drivers) that she'll "erupt like a volcano", and that those in her close circle actually "recoil in fear" when it happens.

Ridiculous Future Inflation

• An old joke tells of a man who suffers a coma and wakes up 50 years later. He calls his stockbroker firm, which tells him that due to a split he now has a billion dollars. Before he can celebrate, the payphone asks him to insert $1 million dollars...
• In Germany under the Weimar Republic, it did reach a point when a newspaper cost 100 billion marks, and you literally needed wheelbarrows of marks just to buy groceries. In some cases, the wheelbarrow itself was worth more than its contents. Germans of that era would burn wads of banknotes as fuel during the winter, owing to the money being cheaper to burn than the wood/paraffin alternative.
  • This was parodied in the fake travel guide Molvania: A Land Untouched by Modern Dentistry. An enigmatic leader of the country faced widespread inflation, the book mentioning that the people had to carry wheelbarrows of money to purchase simple goods. The leader solved this problem by declaring wheelbarrows legal tender.
• Less well-known than the German hyperinflation, the worst inflation yet happened in Hungary in the wake of World War II. When the pengő currency was replaced by the forint on 1st August 1946, the conversion rate was 4* 10^29 (a 4 followed by 29 zeros) pengő to a single forint.
  • To give you an idea of just how ridiculous this number is: if you could buy one atom of hydrogen for one pengő — just one atom — you could fill the Hindenburg for twenty-five forints. (And, at 2010 exchange rates, that would run you a little over 12¢ US, less than a tenth of a euro.)
• Currently happening in Zimbabwe where the exchange rate at late June, 2008 was 20 billion $Z to 1 $US. In 2007 the inflation rate was going up so fast that golfers would prepay for their drinks before starting their round because the price would have gone up significantly by the time they finished the 18th hole, and that waiting a day to buy bread meant you could no longer afford to do so.
  • The economy is right now pretty much running on foreign currency: the Zimbabwean dollar is so worthless that it's actually more cost effective to sell the currency for use as recycled paper (and get paid in real money) then it is to use it for its face value. A Zimbabwean newspaper printed its ads on Zimbabwean money...
  • Zimbabwean government banned its own currency in April 2009.
  • Before then the inflation was exponential... on a logarithmic graph◊
• In very recent past, exchange rate for one U.S. dollar was about 1,500,000 Turkish liras. Six zeros have been removed from the currency since.
• 1996, Poland revalued its currency by knocking off four of the zeros; there was a period in which both old and new currency was accepted and goods were double-priced accordingly.
• In 1997 in Russia. Only three zeros got chopped instead of four, so for about a year there were neat, Soviet-like single-digit sums. Then came crisis of 98, and inflation struck again... It got much better recently, but inflation is still about 10% per year, so rumors of a new revaluation tend to hover around.
• Mexico dropped three zeros out of the "peso" for the sake of simplicity. New coins and bills appeared into circulation and the old ones were taken out.
• The Government of Ghana lopped four zeroes off the end of the cedi when it hit 10,000 to a dollar back in 2007.
• The Soviet Union used to have coin-operated phones. Then it collapsed, and in the 1990s after hyperinflation the rubles, never mind the kopeks, became totally worthless. The only source of coins to run the coin operated machines was the phone company who could recycle the coins and sell them for whatever the phone call was worth. This also happened on the Moscow and St Petersburg metros, where the barriers were coin-operated. The metro system sold tokens the same size and weight as the coin that had operated them.
• A huge problem in the South during the American Civil War, due to the Confederate government simply printing more money to pay for the war. As one politician put it: "You bring your money to market in a basket, and bring home what you buy in your pocketbook." An additional problem was that the CSA's currency was redemption-based, with the theory that a few years after the war, one could turn it in for 'hard' currency. Thus, when the South was defeated, the money became 'As worthless as a Confederate bill'.
• During the late eighties in Peru the inflation was ridiculously high, to the point that in 1990 the annual inflation rate had well surpassed 10000% (yes... that is a one followed by 4 zeroes). As a consequence you did have to buy meager stuff like a bottle of coke with millions of intis. When the Inti was changed for the Nuevo Sol the exchange rate was 1 million Intis to the Sol.
• In Brazil, inflation slowly grew through the 70s and 80s, reaching 200%/year around 1985 and something like 1700%/year in 1989. Inflation was fixed in 1994 with yet another currency (the Real) which is still working today.
• In Venezuela it reached the point where one American dollar was Bs.5,000, they fixed it though; now with the "Strong" bolivars, the conversion rate is 5 Bolivars to the dollar.
• During and after the American Revolution, paper money issued by the Continental Congress was proverbially worth nothing, mostly because the government had no effective powers and no assets to back it.
• Ancient societies had this problem even though they used coins that had intrinsic values. The problem was that many rulers would need a lot of coins fast so they would just slightly decrease the percentage of the good stuff in the coins so they could issue a lot of coins cheaply.
  • The later Roman Empire suffered hyperinflation when, instead of diluting the gold, the government repeatedly simply tried to buy it all.
  • King Henry VIII of England was known as "Old Coppernose" because the silver would wear off the high-relief parts of his coins, revealing the underlying copper.
  • For a time the last US coins minted with silver content (quarters and dimes from the early 60s) were worth more as precious metals than as collectibles. Enough coins were melted down that the balance swung the other way, and the coins are rare enough to collect again.
• In 1986, an Italian politician proposed to replace the old currency (lira) with the "lira pesante" (heavy lira), with a value of 1000 lire for each lira pesante, in order to bring Italian prices in line with the other European nations. Some printing tests were made, but technical and political problems proved the currency replacement to be impossible, so the project was abandoned. Italy eventually switched from the lira to the euro in 1999, with a conversion value of 1936.27 lire for each euro.

Statuesque Stunner

• Most working models are very tall, the better to show off the clothes.
• Sigourney Weaver is 5'11", is most famous for playing Ripley in the Alien films, and anyone who's seen Galaxy Quest knows how hot she can be. (That scene in Alien Resurrection where she sinks a basketball over her head without looking? Not manipulated. No points for guessing what sports she spent high school playing...)
• Brigitte Nielsen, who portrayed Red Sonja in The Movie.
• Serena Williams and especially her much taller sister, Venus Williams.
• Leila Ali, who is also an Amazonian Beauty.
• Lucy Lawless, the star of Xena Warrior Princess.
• Lynda Carter, who played Wonder Woman on TV.
• Amy Acker
• Famke Janssen
• Uma Thurman
• Blake Lively
• Tricia Helfer
• Liv Tyler
• Jennifer Garner
• Anne Hathaway
• Monica Bellucci
• Brooke Shields
• Gwyneth Paltrow
• Cameron Diaz
• Charlize Theron
• Cate Blanchett
• Tilda Swinton
• Katey Sagal (a.k.a Peg Bundy on Married With Children, Spinelli's mom on Recess, Gemma on Sons Of Anarchy, and Leela on Futurama)
• Faith Hill
• Taylor Swift
• Diana, Princess of Wales
• Geena Davis
• Imogen Heap is 6 feet tall.
• Fellow English chanteuse and Florence And The Machine frontwoman Florence Welch is roughly the same height.
• Karen Gillan
• Alicia Witt
• Queen Margrethe II of Denmark is over 6 feet and (especially in her younger years) carries it well◊.
• The current U.S. first lady, Michelle Obama, is 5 feet 10¾ inches tall.
• Nicole Kidman
• Maggie Gyllenhaal
• Leelee Sobieski
• Carey Mulligan
• Laura Dern
• Laura Prepon
• Natascha McElhone
• Many more are listed here.
• Joanie Laurer, aka "Chyna".
• Stacy Keibler
• Lindsay Hayward◊, aka "Aloisia"◊ is 6'8".◊

Evil Is Sexy

• Just check out this billboard◊ and associated website to see that evil really does try to at least make itself sexy! Or more like, using empty temptations of sexiness to get people to abandon perfectly good lives just so you can make money is evil. Same difference.
• Michelle "Bombshell" Mc Gee, a possible Neo-Nazi tatoo-model pornstar adulterous home wrecker...
  • Since a former husband of hers noted that she has Jewish friends, she is probably doing it for this trope.
• Lori of the This Is For Brad videos. She's definitely evil but damn, she's so fucking hot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIlWwI0rmFs
• Nazi uniforms. Invoked, as they hired a popular fashonista to design them.

Driven to Suicide

• During the Wall Street Crash (24 Oct - 29 Oct '29) the suicide rate, especially among stockbrokers, rose.
  • The current economic crisis has driven several people to suicide (including the CFO of FreddieMac), only now they're taking people with them.
• Edwin Howard Armstrong, inventor of FM radio. Left penniless and distraught by his rivals' lawsuits, he jumped from a 13th storey window in 1954, aged 64.
• Ernest Hemingway.
  • Two other 20th century writers that committed suicide: Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. Sylvia Plath killed herself by inhaling the fumes from a gas oven after her husband, fellow poet Ted Hughes, cheated on her and left her for another woman (Assia Wevill, who six years later committed suicide in the same way). Anne Sexton suffocated in carbon monoxide in her garage while wearing her mother's coat—after years of mental illness, blaming herself for her mother's cancer, and feeling responsible for her divorce in 1971.
    • The (somewhat nebulous) connection between creative writers—especially female poets—and higher rates of mental illness/suicide is known as the Sylvia Plath effect.
  • Another 20th century author to commit suicide: Virginia Woolf—inevitably pushed over the edge by years of depression, mental illness (particularly, hearing voices), and feeling guilty about being a burden to her husband. The Norton Anthology of 20th-Century British Literature cites the fear of being arrested by the Gestapo as a reason for suicide. She filled her coat with rocks and walked into the Ouse River near her house. (This had to have been particularly painful, as she was a good swimmer.)
  • John Berryman, another poet, who—like Hemingway—killed himself with a double-barreled shotgun in the mouth. As Nick Cave put it:
    Berryman was best;
    He wrote like wet paper mache
    Uh-huh, but he went the Heming Way.
  • Michael Dorris.
  • Austrian writer Stefan Zweig explained in his suicide note that he couldn't bear to watch Europe tear itself apart again. Reading his autobiography gives you a good idea of just how nostalgic he was for a golden version of Europe that had been destroyed since the first world war.
  • Truman Capote may have committed suicide, or he may have accidentally overdosed. He wouldn't let Joanne Carson call an ambulance, though, so even if he didn't actively kill himself, he didn't really want to live.
  • Hunter S Thompson, in pain from illness and generally tired of life, wrote "Football Season Is Over" and called it a day with a pistol.
  • Robert E Howard made plans to end his life when his mother's health started failing. After his mother entered her final coma and a nurse told him that she would never again regain consciousness, Howard went to his car and shot himself in the head, dying the day before his mother did.
• Voice actress Mary Kay Bergman.
• More intelligent animals, such as dogs, cats, monkeys, and apes, have been known to be driven to suicide by the loss of a master, mate, or companion, either passively by starvation and dehydration, or actively by jumping off a precipice or lying in front of oncoming traffic.
• In World War II, the Japanese government deliberately frightened the civilian populations, most notably in Okinawa, about the supposed atrocities that the Allies would inflict should they take their islands to the point where many committed suicide.
• One of the less sung figures in World War II, Alan Turing was instrumental in the decoding of the Enigma machines, where he helped come up with ways to determine the day codes faster. He killed himself after being fired and forced to take medication because he was gay. The medication probably contributed to his decision more than being fired.
  • Turing wasn't just a codebreaker, he basically came up with the idea for what would later become the digital computer. He's one of the greatest unsung geniuses of the twentieth century.
• Painter Vincent van Gogh is now known as a major post-impressionist artist, but his life was extremely hard. He was very talented, but only managed to sell two of his 2 000 artworks, living his life more or less in poverty. He also suffered from schizophrenia, possible bipolar disorder and depression during his last years. Eventually, the voices in his head got the best of him, and van Gogh shot himself on 27th of July 1890.
  • The world was never meant for one as beautiful as him...
• Professor Henry Bedson, the head of the microbiology department at University of Birmingham Medical School, committed suicide in 1978 after samples of live smallpox he was studying traveled through the vents and infected a woman working in the same building, killing her.
• Lemmings don't naturally commit suicide en masse. Disney had to drive them to it in order to get footage.
• In Ancient Rome, committing suicide was a common way out for upper-class individuals who expected to receive a death sentence in the near future. In fact, people sentenced to death were often allowed to take their own life instead of being executed. The Annals of Tacitus mention dozens of such cases.
  • Committing suicide prior to trial was preferable to a death sentence because it allowed your heirs to inherit your estate. If you were executed, your wealth was forfeited to the state.
• Speaking of Ancient Rome, quite a few Roman politicians were driven to suicide in the dying days of the Republic including:
  • Cato the Younger, as with the murder of Pompey and the essential collapse of any resistance to Julius Caesar (which from Cato's perspective was a tragedy since Pompey's coalition was the legitimate government of the Roman Republic), he lacked any desire to live in a world where the Republic had essentially ceased to exist. Caesar was quite displeased with this—Pompey had been murdered and now another of the most powerful men of the Republic died, but neither of these worthy opponents fell at his hands in battle. Cato was highly honored in Rome for his incorruptibility and intransigence and, indeed, Octavian likened himself to Cato.
  • A generation later, more famously, Mark Anthony committed suicide in the aftermath of his crushing defeat at the Battle of Actium, his lover Cleopatra following him to the grave not long afterwards.
• Mitchell Henderson became an infamous Memetic Mutation ("an hero") by committing suicide after his iPod got stolen.
• The infamous case of the game addict who was driven to suicide by Ever Quest.
  • Actually, his mother drove him to it. Everybody just blamed Ever Quest because it was more convenient.
• Ex-Hot Scoop Christine "Chris" Chubbuck commited suicide by shooting herself on the air in The '70s. The damage wasn't nearly as severe as head explosions or Pink Mist, as those in the studio thought it was a tasteless prank... until they realized it wasn't. Poor Christine died some hours later.
  • Robert "Bud" Dwyer did something similar. And then Filter wrote a song about it.
• Kurt Cobain.
• Voice actor Daisuke Gouri killed himself by cutting his wrists open in Nagano in January 2010.
• Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky arguably killed himself after former "friends" were threatening to go public about his homosexuality.
• To put it politely, it isn't exactly an unfounded stereotype when you hear about poets always committing suicide. The "Confessional Poetry" movement of the Modernist era is a particularly morbid example. Again, to put it politely, all of the examples given in the opening paragraph on the article for the movement on The Other Wiki took their own lives.
• School bullies drive their victims to suicide so often that there's a specific term for it: "bullycide." Just part of growing up...right?
  • Also has spread to the internet in places like My Space, where some people are hounded and tormented by other people to the point where they announce their plans to kill themselves and their tormentors cheer them on. There has been one case that made the news where a teenage girl was harassed over and over again over a personal issue in her life and she killed herself. It was revealed that the tormentor was an adult woman who knew the girl in person and didn't like her.
    • Let's get the name of the heartless, cruel adult out in the open here: Lori Drew is the name of the cruel monster who got Megan Meier to kill herself. Because Megan and Lori's daughter were having a typical teenaged spat. Megan was just thirteen; her adult tormentor was obviously a lot older. And she got lured in by a fake profile set up to fool her into thinking a boy was interested in her. There are no words....
  • Combine Kids Are Cruel and Adults Are Useless, and you have the case of Phoebe Prince.
• France Télécom employees : 46 have commited suicide from January 2008 to April 2010, due to a management style based on permanent harassment and stress.
  • Questionable. France Télécom employs 180,000 people (from engineers to civil servants from its government-owned days). 46 out of France Télécom's 180,000 employees means the suicide rate of France Télécom employees is 25 per 100,000; very close to the average suicide rate of France, slightly below by some estimates, slightly above by others. In other words being France Télécom employees was most likely incidental to their suicides.
  • A somewhat facetious and unsympathetic look at the phenomenon by the people at Reason Magazine draws this conclusion.
• Mark Speight, a presenter on the British children's art programme SMart. He was discovered to have hung himself near Paddington Station after his fiancée died.
• Various employees of Foxconn in China, in early 2010.
• 50% of transgendered people attempt suicide at least once before their 18th birthday. Also, obviously, many other LGBT individuals, especially young people and teenagers.
• More about the Werther Effect: After German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote The Sorrows of Young Werther (mentioned above), young men who were deeply affected by the novel because of its subject manner (a young man in unrequited love with a beautiful young woman who was attached to a much older man) would visit Goethe and confess their own unrequited loves to him, then they'd depart and commit suicide.
• This story of a student who committed suicide after being outed as gay due to a prank.
• Including the young man in the news story above, at this writing, 6 gay teens across the United States have taken their own lives in the past week. For every LGBT kid who commits suicide, another 20 try.
• Ian Curtis of Joy Division hung himself, due most likely to his collapsing marriage and bouts of severe epilepsy, combined with pre-existing depression.
• Photographer Francesca Woodman jumped out of a loft window in 1981, at the age of 22. Her suicide was most likely caused by a failed relationship and her work.
• It has happened way too often at MIT.

Crap Saccharine World

• A Potemkin Village is the deliberate invoking of this trope. The best known examples are from Stalinist USSR, used to garner favorable publicity in Western Europe and North America, and hide the rampant poverty, starvation, and imprisonment and murder of political dissidents; and the Nazi example below.
• Every totalitarian state lives this trope—they all present a shiny happy face to the rest of the world, and no one ever officially acknowledges the complete lack of human rights, or the fact that the People's Republic of Tyranny needs a Secret Police and State Sec to protect the cruel regime from its own people. The grand champion of this game has to be North Korea, if this travel diary is any indication.
• Until the early 1980s Switzerland would imprison teenagers who were deemed "morally loose" or otherwise out of keeping with Swiss morals in "administrative detention"- high security prison- for indefinite periods that lasted in some cases for years. Even better, there was no adjudication before a judge or police or social worker, if your local elders thought you were trouble you never had a chance to even argue your point. Worse, "[s]ome young women - those deemed to have "loose morals" - were forcibly sterilised."
  • And Swiss women didn't get the right to vote until 1971.
• Several concentration camps received lovely reviews from the Red Cross inspectors. Why? Because the Nazis made sure to clean up, repaint buildings, and quickly gas and cremate any inmates that didn't look up to par.
  • The most famous of these "model camps" being Terezin (Theresienstadt).
• The Church of Happyology and many other cults are like peanut M&Ms: bright and colorful on the outside, dark and full of nuts on the inside. And some people can't tell the difference between them and regular M&Ms.
• Many workplaces, especially offices.
• If this Cracked article is anything to go by, Disneyland isn't exactly the "Happiest Place on Earth" it claims to be.
  • Disneyworld, in Florida, treats its employees terribly, but it goes through a cycle that lasts about eight years that takes it between this and an actual good place to work. It starts with having a lot of employees and making a lot of money. Greed kicks in, and the higher-ups think they can make even more money by laying people off, so they do. Service quality drops sharply, complaints come in, Disney makes less money. Even more people get laid off. Moneymaking continues to decline. Someone comes to their senses and starts hiring. Disney gets a lot of employees and starts making a lot of money. Rinse, repeat.
• Amish culture is seen as simple, idyllic and carefree by many non-Amish people, but there is also evidence of their horrific treatment of women and animals in many Amish communities.
  • I think you mean "getting away with child molestation", don't you?
  • One horrible example involves a woman trying to tell the authorities about the molestation and the authorities being unable to help. Even more horrible is when her mother found out — she had a dentist pull out all the woman's teeth. All of them. When it was done, the mother looked at her and said, "I guess you won't be talking anymore." As judgemental as this may sound, that mother is the epitome of a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing.
• Singapore. The place is like Disneyland with the death penalty. You can get hanged from possessing painkillers, possessing bubble gum leads into outrageous fees and caning is the usual punishment for graffiti.
• The City of Northpole in Alaska: on the surface its all Santa Claus house, candycane light posts and gimmicky stores, but once you get to know the people of the city you find out about the meth labs, dysfuncational families and the STD outbreak in the middle school.
• If you consider the implications of many of PETA's ideas (no testing drugs on animals, implying we'll test on non-consenting humans) and their endorsement of products containing palm oil (most likely grown by slave labor in Africa) and soy protein isolate (hexane emissions), it is a crapsaccharine world, with shades of Powered by a Forsaken Child.
  • And PeTA kills animals.
  • Also some palm oil, such as that grown in Borneo, has had its lands prepared via massive deforestation. Wonder why orangutans are critically endangered? Yup...
  • Not to mention that their leader is an utter hypocrite. She preaches that the use of animals for any purpose is evil, but she also takes regular animal-derived insulin injections. Her particular type of diabetes is not treatable with bacterial insulin.
  • PETA also tries to convert the carnivorous animals in their shelters to vegetarianism, which, if done on a larger scale, would be a pretty perfect plot for the obliteration of the natural food chain.
• Corporate advertising and public relations can come across as this. Their messages can be incredibly cheery and optimistic even as the company heads into Chapter 11.
• Communities that are a part of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints certainly counts.
• The candy industry. You're making candy! How can it not be awesome? Because it's one of the most cutthroat businesses in the world. Industrial espionage runs rampant, quality control is draconian, cocoa farming usually relies on Third-World slave labor, and the heads of one of the largest candy companies in the world, Mars, are notorious for their ruthlessness. (Forrest Mars, who turned the company into what it is today, is said to have never let his children eat M&Ms on the grounds it wouldn't make him profit.)
  • The candy business has long been a warped Crapsaccharine World. Roald Dahl satirized this in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory.
  • Likewise, margarine industry. Margarine producers have been caught on using cadaver fats from rendering plants on making foodstuffs, as they are cheaper than vegetable fats.
• Zoos. They present an facade of keeping the animals entertained and happy, but underneath that, they're shitty little prisons that are mere shadows of a creature's natural habitat. Subverted in that many actually try to save endangered species, though more cynical people might argue that the zoos only do this to give themselves a good image or to make the human guests feel better about the animals' condition.
• The best thing to remember is that, thankfully, no place or time on Earth is completely good or completely bad. If you just learn to recognize flaws and deal with them in an adult manner, you'll be at least somewhat happy.
  • Even if you shouldn't be.

Beard Of Evil

• Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan, grew a diabolical goatee to go along with his Bald of Evil and to fit in the part.
• Attila the Hun, the notoriously cruel barbarian warrior known (in Western history) as the "Scourge of God," reportedly wore a beard.
• The Mongolian ruler Genghis Khan, who declared himself the "Wrath of God," and is remembered throughout Eastern Europe and the Middle East as a brutal, genocidal warlord (but considered a hero by his own people).
• Older Than Feudalism: The Romans had a fear of uncivilized peoples (for good reason, as it turns out). They marked civilized men as shaved, and unshaved ones as barbarians.
  • The Emperor Hadrian grew a beard. During his reign he was often considered to be something of a tyrant. (His modern image as a placid old man with a passion for architecture and pretty boys wouldn't be shared by the Jews he persecuted and drove out of Jerusalem, or the senators he executed without a trial...)
  • Beards eventually returned to popularity in the late Roman Empire, and the association between barbarism and beardedness eventually disappeared. On the other hand, Roman beards would tend to be very neat and well-kept, so there might have been discrimination on the basis of the style of beard.
• Lenin had a very sinister-looking goatee as well as being bald. Trotsky had a matching goatee, but he had hair and Nerd Glasses (and thus looked a little less evil, while actually being more evil, or at least more ruthless).
• Joseph Stalin had a mustache that demanded obedience and respect.
• Gaal of the black metal band Gorgoroth is infamously known as the most evil man in Norway. That he has a very impressive beard of evil◊ certainly helps.
• Blackbeard. How could you make your beard any more evil than stuffing it with burning firecrackers?
• Italo Balbo, a Fascist militant and an Italian air marshal in the Mussolini era, sported a well-groomed goatee.
• After being exposed for multiple affairs behind his wife's back and generally having his good guy reputation destroyed, Tiger Woods returned to the golf scene after a hiatus, and at his very first press conference... sported a Goatee!
• Saddam Hussein wore a bushy mustache throughout his adult life. After being captured by American military forces, he also sported a graying beard (which he wore until his execution).
• Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban have all sported large, bushy beards as part of their interpretation of Islam. However, the idea that it is preferable for a Muslim man to have a beard is actually rather uncontroversial, and there are plenty of Muslim men who aren't terrorists and prefer the large, bushy beard. Shortly after 9/11, this was satirized in a Capitol Steps song in which they warned Bin Laden & Company that the USA has "a new beard-seeking missile!"
• Averted by many, many, many real-life, movie, and comic book stage magicians, only some of whom are evil.
• Adolf Hitler, the size of his mustache being inversely proportional to his evilness! It also greatly reduced the number of toothbrush mustaches among the world's population after WWII.
• Rasputin The Mad Monk, though it was more a Beard of Crazy.
• The prolific serial killer Pedro Lopez (a.k.a. the "Monster of the Andes") wore a straggly beard and mustache at the time of his arrest. Frighteningly, he may still be alive and walking the streets today...
• Charles Manson, whose beard (and appearance) has only become more unkempt and sinister with the passage of time.
• Ted Kaczynski, aka the "Unabomber".

Language Equals Thought

• Experiments have proven that your ability to register a particular distinct color depends on whether you associate that color with a word. In fact, the Himba tribe in Namibia, for example, lumps red, orange, and pink together as "serandu". Further, the ability to distinguish colors is affected by verbal distractions, since your language center is what helps you "see" the color by this association.
  • It is claimed that the number of English words for different colours in common use increased almost tenfold in the century following Newton's demonstration of the spectrum, suggesting that people needed to be told that different colours existed before they started to distinguish them. In earlier centuries "red," for example, was applied to everything from blood to a fox, and "blue" to a lot of tints we now consider shades of grey. By the 2000s, interior designers had become annoyed that customers couldn't even tell "ivory" from "eggshell".
  • This 2010 article in Cracked relates the "serandu" story and four other "insane ways language can control your mind".
• Due to Japanese culture being highly class- and status-conscious, the Japanese language has no way to address or refer to an individual as an equal. All forms of address, denoted by "honorific" suffix particles attached to an individual's name, and second-person personal pronouns, imply that the speaker is either of higher or lower social status. The most commonly known honorifics are -san, -chan, -sama, and -kun. Forms of address can still be quite complex. For example, the suffix -dono implies "social inferior greatly respected by social superior". Furthermore, the actual implication of the suffix changes whether it's used with a stranger, friend, aquaintance, family member, etc.; and the context in which it's used. Even using someone's name without an honorific implies a superior social status. As Japanese culture becomes more westernized, this is changing, and use of certain honorofics and pronouns is increasingly less common. A few are now considered archaisms used only by the elderly, or in extremely formal situations.
  • Because of this complexity, there are almost no generic personal insults in Japanese, as there are in most other languages. Insults are typically conveyed by using an "inappropriate" honorific or pronoun. For example, using the "familiar" -chan honorific, or second-person pronoun "omae", with a stranger or social superior is treated as impolite or outright insulting. These are often very subtle and highly dependent on context, making them even more confusing for non-native speakers. To further complicate matters, using a form that is excessively polite or formal — for example, using -sama instead of -san for one's immediate supervisor at work — can also be considered insulting. However, this actually has parallels in other languages — eg. in English, the sarcastic use of "sir" in a similar situation would be considered insulting on roughly the same level.
• A grammatical example: there are solid studies showing that for courts in English-speaking countries, where we vehemently object to the passive voice, it's easier to solve cases than in countries where the passive voice is something they use frequently. One might suppose this is because we reinforce the pathways that figure out who did what because we access that information all the time.
  • That said, eyewitnesses are a terrible form of evidence. It's better than most others, though.

All Of The Other Reindeer

• Asian people living in the united States gets this, ranging anywhere from racial slurs ( "ching, chang, chong" being the most common one) to physical assaults repeatedly and continuously, everywhere they go. Racism against Asians is sometimes considered to be acceptable in America and even statistics show that Asians face more bullying than any other ethnicity. There are zero popular Asian entertainers, and Asian actors are usually only seen in kung-fu movies. Many popular celebrities have openly made racist remarks towards Asians and there was zero uproar. More on this: (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/feb/21/jeremy-lin-racism-asian-americans, http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090128200304AASRt1l, http://www.socialanxietysupport.com/forum/f32/is-it-socially-acceptable-to-make-fun-of-asians-83659/, http://asianamericanmovement.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/americas-anti-asian-racism-in-black-and-white/, https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=12963178900A59832600&page=3 (even TV tropes users are recognizing this!))

  • A book about this: http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Girl-Ghetto-Ying-Ma/dp/1460970454. Anyone that doubts this can go ask any Asian person that lives in the US; you will not be able to find a single person that hasn't been bullied because of their ethnicity and if you can...well they're probably living in the countryside or something.

• Truth in Television, to varying degrees, in many a schoolyard.
• Ironically not the reason the Columbine killers went on their massacre, as no one remembers them being bullied. Dylan Klebold thought he was being bullied, suffered from severe depression, and had a massive inferiority complex while Eric Harris was a complete sociopath. In fact, reports say the killers were the reindeer, and the 'Trenchcoat Brigade' were some of their targets.
• Hines Ward was born in Korea to a Korean mother and an African-American father. As a child, he was shunned by Korean society. After moving to the United States and becoming a Superbowl MVP, he and his mother were invited back to Korea to be honored as Korean heroes. Ward's mom gave a press conference reminding everyone that when Hines was a small boy in a stroller, people went out of their way to come over and spit on the half breed black boy. She concluded by telling the country to go screw itself. Hines has been much more positive and has used his position to sponsor trips to Korea for mixed race children and has said "If the country can accept me for who I am and accept me for being a Korean, I'm pretty sure that this country can change and accept you for who you are," and has also set up a foundation to combat racism in Korea.
• There's a very long and very sad history of black Olympic athletes being held up as heroes while America needs them for Gold medals, then being thrown to the wayside as soon as the Olympics end. Most notable is Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals in the 1936 Olympics in Germany. In Hitler's Germany, Owens was allowed to stay in hotels with his white peers. When he returned to the "The Land of the Free", he was legally forbidden from sharing accommodations with his white peers. When the entire Olympic team was invited to the White House to meet the President, Owens was not allowed to come, even though he was the most successful athlete amongst them. He never met the President, nor received a telegram from him (as all the other Olympic athletes did), nor did he receive ANY communication from the President as is tradition. Even Adolf Hitler stood up and waved to Owens during the Olympic proceedings. Owens later had his Olympic eligibility revoked for superfluous reasons. He spent much of the rest of his life working at a dry-cleaner or as a gas station attendant.
  • Just as bad was what happened to 1936 Olympians Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller... well, almost Olympians. They were both pulled from their events because they were Jewish. To be fair, there was another, INFINITELY less pleasant reason for Owens' treatment in the Reich: Hitler's hold on power was still weak and fresh off of a few thousand rounds of the West complaining about little itsy bitsy things like Pogroms and the like taking place courtesy of the Brownshirts. Thus, Hitler CONSCIOUSLY chose to invoke this disparity by de-discriminating Berlin and removing several of the racial and religious restrictions upon those coming there. The second the Olympic village moved out, the "Verboten" signs and punishing racial discrimination came back into play. Had Owens stopped to meander in Berlin after he faded from public view, he would likely have "disappeared."
• Things were similar for black boxers around that time. When Jack Johnson became the first African-American World Heavyweight Champion, there were mass searches for a "Great White Hope" to dethrone him. When he beat James Jeffries in "The Fight Of The Century," riots broke out across the country in protest.
  • Johnson probably didn't help his case by constantly resorting to vicious mockery of his opponents and overtly parading around with white women, a tremendous social taboo at the time. Then again, if the reindeer will never have anything but loathing for you, you may as well rub their faces in it.
• Alan Turing, a great mathematician and logician who contributed a lot for the existence of modern computers, was injected with hormones that caused his body to become deformed (by growing breasts, for instance) just because he was gay. And then he killed himself. The British government officially apologised for the way Turing was treated... 55 years later.
  • Not only was Turing a great mathematician, but he was one of the major people who created a decryption device called a Turing bombe (using the work of Polish cryptographers, who created the theory, but lacked the funds to make the device itself), used against Enigma, the encryption device used in the German Army during World War II. It can be argued that without Turing, there would be no British government today. And this was how they treated him.
  • He also created the idea of the Turing test for artificial intelligence which can still be found in use today.
• The autobiographical book ''Please Stop Laughing At Me: One Woman's True Inspirational Story by Jodee Blanco appears to be a version of this, particular according to many user reviews. From the Amazon synopsis: "Blanco describes how she was first victimized in a Roman Catholic grammar school because she defended some deaf children when they were picked on by hearing students. She gave the names of the ringleaders of this cruel activity to one of the nuns, and was subsequently ostracized by former friends for being a tattletale." The book describes how she was cruelly bullied and tormented in several different schools, apparently as a result of defending other mocked people, getting good grades and the like. Kids can most certainly be cruel.

Super Prototype

• The Avro Arrow◊ was almost an inversion. The vehicle depicted would indeed have been far less capable than the production version, if the production version had ever flown... as it was, the RCAF had to make do with the CF-101 Voodoo, which didn't measure up even when compared with the Mark I prototypes, due to Political Meddling.
• Bell P-39 Airacobra. Equipped with turbosupercharger, it could outclimb and out-turn almost all contemporary fighters. The USAAF wanted the plane without the turbo, turning it into a dog, making it inferior against the Japanese planes everywhere except at very low altitudes, where it could well hold its own - as proven by the Soviets. USAAF phased the P-39 out in 1944.
• Concept cars are usually much more impressive than what companies end up offering. This is usually because automakers want to impress people at shows, but when it comes to actually making their ultra-high tech, extreme horsepower machines, there are practical problems like manufacturing costs, safety regulations, and emissions tests to pass. Especially true with the flashy bespoke interiors of most concepts. These always get toned down a bit because of the costs of mass production.
  • Actual prototype cars made for testing are an inversion; they're frequently camouflaged in black-and-white plastic overlays to render their design undetectable and get used hard, the idea being to test all parts for durability to avoid customers' new cars breaking down during the warranty period once in production. And the warranty period is now a minimum of three to as much as ten years...
  • High end sports cars run the gamut of this trope, starting out themselves as testbeds for new engines or suspension, then being turned into Ace Custom race cars built and setup for one or two race drivers, and then often special versions of the road car will be released with elements from the race cars, e.g. the Audi R8 GT and the Aston Martin DBS. And then of course there are prototype class race cars which are used to prove the durability of very new technologies - Audi's T Di system and Mazda's modern rotary engines, for instance, and do so by racing at average speeds over 120 mph for 24 hours straight.
  • One of the most (in)famous examples is the Jaguar XJ220. The prototype had a complex four-wheel drive system, ABS, and a V12 which, according to Jaguar's heritage, was supposed to sound like heaven. Then, the production version came. No ABS, 4WD, and a turbo V6 with a harsh sound and tons of lag. And a higher price tag. Justified still, courtesy of the early nineties economic downturn and emission regulations.
• The legendary Spitfire is a real-life example. Prototypes had flat rivets that were flush with the skin of the aircraft, but these would have been too expensive and time-consuming to use on production planes. Because any bumps on the hull produced drag which could drastically affect speed, range, maneuverability and maximum altitude (absolutely key factors for fighter aircraft, and the British needed the Spitfire to be better than the Messerschmitts on all of these) tests were run by gluing dried peas to the hull of prototypes to find an optimal pattern that minimised drag with normal rivets.
  • Spitfires are also a real-life inversion - early prototypes flew so high that the guns would freeze in the cold and jam while firing. Then when they descended the guns would thaw and the shock of landing would often set them off, to the consternation of runway crew. The solution? Cycling the engine exhaust through the wings kept the guns warm.
• The Breda Ba.88 ground attack aircraft of Fascist Italy during WWII. Designed in 1937, it was a higly futuristic design that set several worldwide speed records. That is, until the production version was loaded down with all the equipment that it would need in its military duties, which had a profound effect on the aircraft's handling. It performed so abysmally that within mere months of the introduction into frontline service, the few remaining aircraft were stripped of all useful components and left scattered around airfields, where they were very useful as tantalizing punching bags to draw enemy attention away from the other aircraft on the airfield that WEREN'T totally useless.
• PS3s, anybody? The earliest models had the ability to play PS 2 games. These models could also have Linux installed on them. These features have since been removed in later revisions. This has undoubtedly angered many, many people.
  • It would not be so bad if those features were included in some kind of higher priced premium model, but Sony has removed them from production entirely (including removing the Linux support retroactively from existing units) which in turn limits consumer options for how they use their hardware. For a system sold with the Tag Line "It only does everything", the feature removal is particularly Ironic.
• The famous USS Monitor was an inversion, although it nearly played it straight. The thing had monstrously powerful guns designed and cast under the direction of the legendary naval designer Dahlgren, who also planned and built the ship. However, the Navy was worried the guns would burst when fired; years before, a Dahlgren gun had done so and killed some high-ranking Navymen. This wouldn't have been too much of a problem, except that Dahlgren designed the guns to punch through anything the Confederates could armor their ships with. When the Monitor fought the CSS Virginia/Merrimac, the two pounded each other with the Monitor having only a slight edge. Later tests showed that if the guns were loaded with the right amount of powder instead of the Navy-ordered half measure, they'd have blasted clear through the CSS Virginia/Merrimac's armor and obliterated the rebel ship.
• Imperial Japan played with this trope. Imperial Navy Zero pilots defending Rabaul received the first of the much-heralded A6M5 models and the last Imperial Navy warplanes that would be truly well-built, making them unintentional Super Prototypes. They frequently further ordered that their ground crew remove the troublesome radios they were given to save weight and improve performance, resulting in Ace Custom as well...which had the side effect of reducing in-flight coordination and making them vulnerable to being bushwhacked by high-flying US aircraft that had been detected by ground radar but that fact could not be communicated to radioless Japanese fighters in the air. A few of the smarter pilots, or those who had seen their wingmen going down with little or no visible damage to the aircraft but a dead pilot, took an opposite tack and had their ground crews weld simple armor plates around the cockpit to improve survivability. These are perhaps the only Ace Customs in reality or fiction that were worse in raw performance.
• A number of prototype Transformers toys have features that didn't make it to the production model. One of the most irritating cases is Leobreaker, who can form a massive clawed arm for his series' Optimus Prime. The prototype could more properly fold up its legs for the forearm, and had actual fingers for the arm. But an oil price spike correspondingly spiked the price of plastic. Transformers toys have a limited plastic-per-item budget, and the extra joints and parts could not be kept unless he were moved up to another size class. Bloody, bloody, damn.
• Whenever a company offers products only for a limited time, they are almost always in some way better and more popular than the regularly produced products.
• Legend of the near-extinct Muay Boran martial art claims it makes its already brutally effective successor Muay Thai look wimpy.
• The first space shuttle Columbia had ejection seats installed for its first four flights with only 2-man crews.
• The US Navy's Sea Wolf class attack submarine is this to the Virginia-class.
• The "tester" doses for a given batch of drugs will often be better quality and purity than the main batch. These testers are given out for free to create good word of mouth for the upcoming sale.
• The A-12 Oxcart spy plane was a precursor to its more famous descendant, the SR-71 Blackbird. Whilst the aircraft are all but identical to the naked eye (it takes intimate knowledge of the two aircraft are spot the difference), the older machine could fly a bit faster and a bit higher (mach 3.33 and 95,000 feet verses mach 3.2 and 80,000 feet). The A-12 wasn't an undisputedly superior aircraft though, the SR-71 had more range, could carry a heavier payload and and had a crew of 2 as opposed to the single overworked crewman on the Oxcart. The Blackbird didn't really have to be faster than the Oxcart, of course, just faster than whatever SA Ms the enemy had at their disposal.
• When the Eurofighter Typhoon was still in the design stages, (then West) Germany demanded and got the other partners to agree on a lower spec final product when costs got out of control.
• The exorbitant cost of the famous F-22 Raptor eventually resulted in the Pentagon only ordering 187 planes, especially because the über high-tech F-22 cannot be exported and sold to other countries as doing so would give away state-of-the-art US technology. The newer F-35 on the other hand mounts cheaper and stripped-down versions of many F-22 technologies to make it exportable, with the USAF and Navy planning to buy 2,447 planes - and that's not counting the exports to the Israelis With Infrared Missiles. The F-35 is a multirole fighter while the F-22 is a dedicated air superiority fighter that could probably blow the former out of the sky with minimal effort. Conservation of Ninjutsu, perhaps?
  • It's more a case that the United States doesn't really need an awesome dedicated air superiority fighter as much as it needs a workable multirole plane. The Raptor can blow the Lightning II out of the sky without breaking a sweat, but the Lightning's better at doing the jobs the Americans think they'll need to do in the near future. It's better to have a Boring, but Practical plane than one that's Too Awesome to Use.

Pragmatic Villainy

• Generalisimo Franco. While he was not a nice person, he was competent as a dictator, was more instrumental about his atrocities, and avoided the type of "eccentricities" that Those Wacky Nazis are associated with. One contemporary said, "Franco made Spain safe. Not for Democracy, but for the people."
• Benito Mussolini, Il Duce of Fascist Italy, killed far fewer political opponents than Hitler or Stalin (whole orders of magnitudes fewer) and remained fairly pragmatic (although unnecessarily showmanlike) about instituting Fascism in Italy and the world up till the point he started getting chummy with Hitler.
  • That may be more, Even Evil Has Standards. He was an incompetent tyrant, unlike Franco who whatever his faults was competent at least. Mussolini also devoted himself to a cult of conquest which Italy's military capability could really not support, and which brought no benefit to Italy. Franco did none of this; he was perfectly happy to remain neutral, and avoid tangling with the Royal Navy. And Franco didn't give a hoot about how ungrateful Adolf Hitler thought him.
    • Of course, Mussolini is the one who got himself messily lynched.
• Genghis Khan famously mused over the idea of massacring the entire population of northern China to create pastureland for Mongol horses. He was dissuaded when it was realized living Chinese pay more in taxes than dead Chinese.
  • The story goes that he was convinced when one of his advisors, a Uighur, told him:
    Kill everyone, and you take a million bolts of silk all at once. Let the people live, and you can have 500,000 bolts of silk every year.
  • He also recognized the value of trade, even with nations whom you planned on conquering, and encouraged trade with other nations heavily. Gaining material goods from other lands is always a welcome asset, and sending your own merchants into foreign lands allowed them to gather crucial intelligence for when you finally moved in to conquer them.
• The Nazis' racial ideology painted East Asians as untermenschen, which did not stop them forming alliances with Imperial Japan (and prior to switching sides, with the Republic of China).
  • While not considered as übermenschen, the Asian people was still held in high regard by the Nazis. They were regarded almost as the Aryan race's closest cousins.
  • Indeed, they had a battalion of Indian soldiers made up of POWs who were willing to fight the British, though they didn't do much, and they made deals with South Slavs to help hold the Balkans.
    • Which makes the South Slavic case an example of Pragmatic Villainy: Admittedly, Hitler had a rather complex relationship with South Slavs (as opposed to the West and East Slavs, whom he unequivocally hated).
  • Nazis are notable for their bizarre ideas about race. In general, nonwhite Aryans were considered such primarily for the purposes of this trope. The homeland of the Aryan race in Theosophy was Tibet, after all. (In linguistics, Müller placed the Aryan homeland farther west, in the region now known as Iran and Afghanistan; contemporary scholarship places the Indo-European Urheimat, the closest thing to an Aryan homeland that may have historically existed, in Ukraine, southern Russia, and the Caucasus). The Nazis considered the Sioux to be Aryans, in an attempt to develop a race of Sixth Ranger Traitors in the U.S. (a trope that was obviously subverted), and to show a case of Aryans being oppressed by Jews (as all governments save Germany's and its allies' were run by Jews in Nazi ideology). The Japanese were a good example of this trope as well.
• In general, The Holocaust is notable for being a spectacular aversion of pragmatic villainy: As terrible as it is to force millions into slave labor camps, the fact that the labor they performed served no real purpose to Germany's larger war effort, and indeed diverted trains that could have otherwise distributed necessary supplies to Germans at the front, makes it as impractical as it was evil. Even the horrendous medical experiments performed on some prisoners were .000001% more justified than the slave labor, since, at the very least, some useful information about the effects of phosgene gas and cold on the human body is still used today... reluctantly.
  • A few of the more notorious Nazi "scientists" put out work so shoddily done even their peers threw it out. Their experiments had no purpose beyond cruelty.
  • Those Wacky Nazis and, to a lesser extent their Japanese Allies were the masters of screwing themselves over with this trope. As if the industrial might of Western Europe and the USA was not enough of an enemy, they had to so thoroughly antagonize some of the most useful allies that were available to them: the Jews, the East Slavs and the Chinese. Granted, the Chinese and Mother Russia would still need to be delivered of their current governments, but that has nothing to do with picking a fight with the much more valuable general populations. Oh, and the Jews? The Nazis really messed that one up, because they were very important in the running of pretty much every industrialized nation and some that were not, one example being Germany, which only managed its post-defeat comeback because the survivors took a massive level in Badass
    • Given that antisemitism was a cornerstone of Nazi ideology and one of its defining attributes, it makes perfect sense for them to have done what they did - remove Jews from society that is, not the Holocaust. The Nazis believed that Jews were the cause of all misery and that they had infiltrated all aspects of German society, diluting it and weakening it. So removing them, from that perspective, from whatever job they held, no matter how important, was perfectly rational with that basic belief in place. The Holocaust, though...that was just malice and cruelty with healthy dosage of utter stupidity.
      • Prejudice in itself isn't a logical or sensible goal. Of course the Holocaust was an aversion of Pragmatic Villainy.
      • They considered themselves pragmatic, in an especially disgusting way:
    Reinhard Heydrich: "We will not sterilize every Jew and wait for them to die, we will not sterilize every Jew and then exterminate the race; that's farcical. Dead men don't hump, dead women don't get pregnant - death is the most reliable form of sterilization, put it that way."

    • Killing them all and getting at least something out of their detention (at least in theory) was more efficient than the original plan to ship them to Madagascar. Unfortunately. So there is that aspect to it; they were at least trying to be pragmatic about their goal 'de-Jew Germany.' It just so happened that the merciful option was too expensive. Also, it relied upon a conquered British Navy doing the shipping, which the Nazis couldn't use after they lost the Battle of Britain.
    • The really odd thing in all this is that it may well have been the choice of Madagascar that did it, rather than the much-closer Palestine. The militant Zionist group Lehi, known to the British authorities in Mandate Palestine as the "Stern Gang," are reported to have sent a message to the Germans to the effect of "Ship all the Jews to the Middle East, and we'll be more than happy to carve out a little fascist empire here and not bother you guys ever again. Also, we'll help you beat Britain and the Commies." The Nazis, of course, rejected this out of hand, not least because Lehi was at that point a splinter group of a splinter group (Lehi broke off of the main Revisionist formation, the Irgun/Etzel, which broke off from the main Zionist formation, the Haganah), and further not all Lehi members were behind the proposal (meaning that the folks who sent the message were a splinter group of a splinter group of a splinter group).
• Georgy Zhukov, while defending Leningrad in 1941, issued an order that if any man surrenders to the enemy, his family will be shot. Malenkov (a senior Politburo member who was in Leningrad at the time) cancelled the order immediately. After all, scaring your own army away from the battlelines is kind of counterproductive.
• Josef Stalin disbanded his infamous "blocking detachments" - these were formed in 1942 and were deployed behind front lines with the sole purpose of shooting "cowards" and fleeing Soviet troops - after only three months. Of course, this wasn't because he cared for the lives of his soldiers, but because they had a detrimental effect on morale and wasted manpower by diverting troops to the rear.
  • Funny, considering that he executed his experienced officers and replaced them with incompetent rookies.
  • He also had a habit of executing or sending to Siberia any person smarter than him. He particularly hated scientists, believing them to be elitists wishing to exploit the hard-working people of the Soviet Union. In his mind, it's perfectly acceptable to threaten your best minds with death or exile in order to get them moving faster. Any delays (because science doesn't always produce results at the speed demanded) were seen as stalling and treated accordingly. Now imagine what Soviet science would be like had Stalin been a little smarter and a little less paranoid. Supposedly, there were plenty of ideas and designs which he rejected out of hand due to them not being immediately useful. These designs would later be re-developed by someone else and give someone else the advantage. That's not Pragmatic Villainy, that's just shortsightedness (from a guy famed for his 5-year plans).
  • Stalin was also highly pragmatic in his treatment of Christians and other religious people in the Soviet Union. Due to his Communist beliefs, Stalin brutally suppressed religious institutions. These institutions were viewed as greedy and corrupt by the laity, so their destruction did not greatly anger them. However, Stalin knew that antagonizing all Christians, which were a huge part of the Russian population, would be a waste of time and resources. This resulted in lay Christians being left alone. Stalin also revived the Russian church in order to stir up support for the war against the Nazis.
• In this video a lion saves a baby rhinoceros from getting eaten by hyenas...because he wanted the hyenas to get away from a carcass.

My Works

Land Before Time: Twilight Valley - a Land Before Time war story written by me.

Darwins Soldiers - a furry Web Original work that started out with a single RP and has spread out to encompass an entire RP trilogy, several spin off short stories and possibly even a novelization in the future.

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