History Literature / GenerationKill

** In episode 6, Colbert talks about his disappointed he is to not have been on a single recon mission, stating that he is a "hunter" by nature. When Godfather assures him that a new mission will be forthcoming, Colbert smiles in anticipation.

* AutobiographicalRole: In the miniseries, Rudy Reyes wound up playing himself after the original actor had to dorp out.

* RecruitersAlwaysLie: In one of his rants, Ray says that Trombley was told by his recruiting officer that he would get to shoot people, Ray was told he would get to go to Thailand and get all kinds of strange and Colbert joined after seeing the Dress Blues commercial. Ray then notes that Trombley hasn't killed anybody[[note]]Until that point[[/note]], Ray is half a world away from good Thai pussy and Colbert is in a MOPP suit that smells like four days of piss and ballsweat.

* SexIsGood: In the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeUYE1XNO5E opinion of Marine Person]], good sex makes people good. [[note]]'''Cpl. Ray Person''': Look at this shit, how come we can't ever invade a cool country, with like chicks in bikinis, you know. How come countries like that don't ever need Marines, I'll tell you why, it's lack of pussy that fucks countries up, lack of pussy is the root fucking cause of all global instability, if more hajis were getting quality pussy, there'd be no reason for us to come over and fuck em up like this, cause a nutbusting haji, is a happy haji. [...] Yeah, you should definitely quote me. This whole thing comes down to pussy! You take the Republican Guard and comp their asses for a week in Vegas. No fucking war! [...] No, in the opinion of this Marine, its about pussy. [not oil, WMD or Saddam] Saddam is just part of the problem, if Saddam invested more in the pussy infrastructure of Iraq than he did in his fucking gay ass army, then this country would be no more fucked up than say, Mexico.[[/note]]

* ObfuscatingStupidity: When Encino Man asks Baptista for his opinion, Baptista gets out of having to offer one by calling him incompetent in a bizarre mixture of Portuguese and heavily-accented English, mixed with dumb-looking grins to look like he's giving him compliments. It works.

* ObfuscatingStupidity: When Encino Man asks Baptista for his opinion, Baptista gets out of having to offer one by babbling in a bizarre mixture of Portuguese and heavily-accented English, mixed with dumb-looking grins. It works.

* ADateWithRosiePalms:
** In the book, Evan Wright explains how marines seem to masturbate at every possible opportunity and compete to see who's masturbated in the strangest location. One claims to have masturbated during a parachute jump. Later on in the book, two marines joke about getting a "combat jack".
** Brad "enjoying the fruits of civilization" in the porta-potty before the invasion.
** In the adaptation, Evan Wright's photo of his girlfriend gets passed around by marines who need a visual aid.

** Rudy taking a run in full combat gear while Marines cheer him on, urging him to [[JoinTheArmyTheySaid "slay that dragon"]].

[[caption-width-right:300:Get some!]]

The series and book are notable for their unvarnished depictions of the grunts' culture, including their views on the Marine Corps, the war, and their place in it. Marines espouse a wide variety of irreverent opinions using spectacularly coarse language and often revel in the opportunity to kill for their country. Many also grapple with the complicated moral footing they find themselves on as trained killers fighting a dubiously justified war surrounded by civilians who may or may not be the enemy. The command staff are frequently depicted as too incompetent or preoccupied with earning promotions to fight the war effectively.

All of this is a far cry from the noble, patriotic heroes audiences usually expect in war media. This triggered accusations that Wright's depictions were heavily embellished, but the Marines themselves have backed up their own depictions as [[RealityIsUnrealistic mostly accurate]].

* ArmedFarces: Incompetent officers, bizarre rants, idiosyncrasies of military culture, and all sorts of other buffoonery are all on display, even if it wasn't meant to be satire.
%%* AutobiographicalRole: Rudy Reyes.

* GoodPeopleHaveGoodSex: In the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeUYE1XNO5E opinion of Marine Person]], good sex makes people good. [[note]]'''Cpl. Ray Person''': Look at this shit, how come we can't ever invade a cool country, with like chicks in bikinis, you know. How come countries like that don't ever need Marines, I'll tell you why, it's lack of pussy that fucks countries up, lack of pussy is the root fucking cause of all global instability, if more hajis were getting quality pussy, there'd be no reason for us to come over and fuck em up like this, cause a nutbusting haji, is a happy haji. [...] Yeah, you should definitely quote me. This whole thing comes down to pussy! You take the Republican Guard and comp their asses for a week in Vegas. No fucking war! [...] No, in the opinion of this Marine, its about pussy. [not oil, WMD or Saddam] Saddam is just part of the problem, if Saddam invested more in the pussy infrastructure of Iraq than he did in his fucking gay ass army, then this country would be no more fucked up than say, Mexico.[[/note]]

** Lance Corporal Harold James Trombley only seems to be interested in people, even civilians. He later admits that he has an irrational desire to get shot.

* RantInducingSlight: The "little wine-sipping Communist dick suck tree-loving bisexual" Frederick's letter.

** Trombley in episode 4. When under fire from a self-propelled AA gun, he calmly spots the distance to the enemy vehicle for air support while bullets land inches away from him. He seems fascinated by the volume of fire that AA gun dishes out and has to be pulled away. Rather than being heroically calm, however, it's implied that Trombley is simply too stupid to feel rational fear.

* HighlyConspicuousUniform: The Recon Marines are issued woodland MOPP suits, prompting disbelief and snark since they're fighting in the desert. Only Wright receives a desert MOPP suit[[note:]]Fitting to the almost comically large list of logistical fuckups however, Wright's suit is still 2 sizes too small and ends up with a large rip in the groin area[[/note]].

* HighlyConspicuousUniform: The Recon Marines are issued woodland MOPP suits, prompting disbelief and snark since they're fighting in the desert. Only Wright receives a desert MOPP suit.

-->"Yo President! Is watchin'! Amerikee! Is watchin'! But more important! ''Godfather!'' Is watchin'. Make no mistake! THERE! WILL! BE! NO! FUCK! UPS!"\\\

* ScrewedPriorities: A major theme in the series.

* DumbJock: Encino Man is a giant, lumbering moron who speaks in nothing but football metaphors, making it painfully clear what his background is.

** Lance Corporal Harold James Trombley, who joined the Marines specifically to shoot people, showed an unnatural desire to see the results of his kills even from a civilian boy he accidentally shot, and who said that combat was far less nerve-wracking to him than watching game shows at home.
--->'''Person:''' That's 'cause he's a psycho. But at least he's our psycho.

In 2003, ''Rolling Stone'' reporter Evan Wright was embedded in the US Marine Corps' First Recon, for the onset of the War in Iraq. Over the next two months, he would have a firsthand view into the lives of some of the toughest men on the planet, UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror, --er-- Saddam Hussein, and the command decisions that put them where they are. Wright compiled these articles into ''Generation Kill'', which was later made into a seven-part miniseries by Creator/DavidSimon on {{Creator/HBO}}.

Marines will talk like Marines, complete with lots of jargon and realism. Some examples:

->''"Dear Frederick, thank you for your nice letter. But I'm actually a U.S. Marine who was born to kill, where you have clearly mistaken me for some sort of wine-sipping communist dick suck. And although peace probably appeals to tree-loving bisexuals like you and your parents, I happen to be a death-dealing, blood-crazed warrior who wakes up every day just hoping for the chance to dismember my enemies and defile their civilizations. Peace sucks a hairy asshole, Freddie. War is the motherfucking answer."''
-->-- '''Cpl. Josh Ray Person'''

->''"If something happens to me, I want my wife to know the truth. If they say we fought valiantly here, I want her to know we fought retarded."''
-->-- '''Sgt. Eric Kocher'''

This complete lack of political correctness in favor of realism is a major cause of criticism for both the book and series. Negative reactions tend to be [[RippedFromTheHeadlines questioning of the material's validity]] at best, and accusations of it being biased and fabricated at worst. The miniseries DVD extras include a discussion with the real Marines, during which this phenomenon is brought up: Ray Person tells a story about meeting people who, despite his own ability to validate the material, refused to believe American serviceman would even swear so much, while Gunnery Sergeant Colbert hypothesized that this mindset among some viewers might be traced back to the tendency of older war movies to depict war as more civilized and glamorous to the point where it's become a case of RealityIsUnrealistic. The author himself has spoken out against media trying to use the book and miniseries as anti-military.

See also Michael Herr's book, ''Dispatches'', also by a ''Rolling Stone'' contributor about UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar for a similar POV.

** Trombley, in episode 4. When under fire from a self-propelled AA gun, he calmly spots the distance to the enemy vehicle for air support while bullets land inches away from him. He seems fascinated by the volume of fire that AA gun dishes out and has to be pulled away although later he admits to actually feeling ''underwhelmed''.

* GenghisGambit: Sixta is smarter than he appears; he knows exactly how ridiculous it is to keep harping on the Marines for the grooming standard, and not only does he do it so they can hate him as an outlet, he has Gunny Wynn tell him when morale drops so he can time it right.

"It was the enemy who stole your food from you, and you should be really, really mad at them. Before we step off on this next mission, I'm reminding you of who your enemy is. The enemy."

* GoingNative: The culture clash between the writer and the marines is quite wide in the beginning of the series, but as the series goes on, he can be increasingly seen smirking and laughing at some of their very extreme behavior, showing that he is internalizing their culture.

* TheJock: Encino Man is a giant, lumbering moron who speaks in nothing but football metaphors, making it painfully clear what his background is.

* LowClearance: During the book's ActionPrologue describing a vehicular assault through a hostile town, the Iraqi soldiers string cables between buildings, hoping to clothesline the roof gunners of the speeding humvees. Bravo 2-1's gunner takes a glancing blow from one of the cables, and quickly shouts to the driver that he's OK.
** In the series, it was a downed power line in the second episode that snagged the gunner, nearly strangling him. Person realizes just in time and reverses the Humvee enough for the marine to free himself.

* ObfuscatingStupidity or GeniusDitz:
** Cpl. Josh Ray Person comes off as either or both of these.
** Turns out that Person was on Ripped Fuel (heavily laced with stimulants and technically banned in the Marine Corps) for the entire invasion, making him [[AlcoholInducedIdiocy a weeeeee bit crazy]]. When they eventually settle in Baghdad and Person crashes from going cold turkey, Wright specifically points out that he's a completely different person, and even ''more'' competent. Humorously, under stress, he ''does'' revert to his old persona - when Evan took the HBO actors and Person out to dinner, he was perfectly polite and calm... then ripped into them when he and Evan were alone in his usual insane manner.
** When Encino Man asks Baptista for his opinion, Baptista gets out of having to offer one by babbling in a bizarre mixture of Portugese and heavily-accented English, mixed with dumb-looking grins. It works.

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: General Mattis delivers a withering one to Colonel Dowdy:

* TheAllegedCar: Bravo 2-1's Humvee, which was missing several key parts like doors and armor. Colbert and Person had to restore it at their own expense. Rudy and Pappy also had to make repairs to Manimal's turret, which could not turn all the way around. According to the book, the issue with missing vehicle components was a somewhat widespread problem in the build-up to the invasion, made worse by the fact that the unit wasn't originally intended to be mechanized at all, and so vehicles had to be scrounged up at the last minute.
** At one point Godfather jokingly informs his officers that some of them are riding in the same humvees used by the Marines during [[UsefulNotes/BarbaryCoastWars their march on Tripoli]].
* AuthorTract: Averted. It doesn't seem like Wright is trying to be specifically apolitical but that the soldiers he's writing about are all very self-aware and won't let him use their actions to push an angle.

* BayonetYa: Captain America loves his bayonet, looking for an opportunity to use it and constantly attaching it even when it would serve no useful purpose. He finally gets to use it - on a restrained detainee. Who he doesn't even wound. He can't even commit war crimes properly.

* BloodKnight:
** Lance Corporal Harold James Trombley, who only seemed excited by killing people, even civilians.

* BunnyEarsLawyer:
** Person again.

* CasualDangerDialog: Played absolutely straight and taken directly from the actual accounts of the Marines under fire. At one point, Person climbs out of his Humvee, calmly walks into enemy fire, and yells for the rest of the convoy to please back the fuck up while bullets whiz over his head. Fick does this soon after when he dives out of his Humvee to run between them all and personally give them directions on how to fix the traffic jam, once it becomes apparent that radio communication is just causing confusion. Listen closely and you'll even hear Gunny Wynn express surprise.

* ColonelBadass: Lt. Colonel Stephen "Godfather" Ferrando in the series only. In the book, he's treated as capable, but generally disliked by his men for his recklessness and his unnecessary adherence to the Grooming Standard.

** Brad "enjoying the fruits of civilization" before the invasion.

* EvenTheGuysWantHim: Quite a few straight male characters comment on how hot Fruity Rudy is. Which he seems to revel in, even though he has a wife back home. It gets lampshaded at one point when the Marines try to invert it by telling the reporter, "It doesn't make you gay if you think Rudy's hot. We all think he's hot. Jesus, you're beautiful." (He says this because he notices the reporter staring at at a nearly naked Rudy, clearly captivated.)
** This excerpt from the book says it best:
--->Sgt. Rudy Reyes, 31, from Kansas City, Missouri, has stripped off his shirt and is washing his chest with baby wipes, every muscle gleaming in the flickering light of a nearby oil fire. Reyes doesn't quite fit the image of the macho brute. He reads Oprah's magazine and waxes his legs and chest. Other members of the unit call him "fruity Rudy" because he is so beautiful. "It doesn't mean you're gay if you think Rudy's hot. He's just so beautiful," Person tells me. "We all think he's hot."
** In the film, Reyes--played by Reyes himself, reportedly because no actor was hot enough (riiiight!)--is initially nude for the scene, then gets dressed. The actual quote is from David Simon, one of the show's creators, who was facing the conundrum of casting someone "who embodied both Reyes' beautiful physique ... and blissed-out, New Age attitude". As Simon says: "He's like a unicorn."

* FelonyMisdemeanor: Do ''not'' bring Charms candy into any Marine vehicle, or even ''eat it''. It's ''bad luck''. [[note]]The book mentions an incident when Trombley quickly and surreptitiously eats a bag of Charms candy, telling the reporter not to tell anyone. Nothing bad happens.[[/note]]

* HollywoodTactics: Completely averted. Not to say that some Hollywood tactics aren't attempted, but rather when they are they're rightly noted to be as stupid as they look.
** All of the combat footage seems to be taken from real life tactics and methods, with the outlandish stuff actually occurring, such as Trombley exposing himself without regard for his own life to find a AAA gun trained on the humvee column, or Person getting out of his humvee in the middle of an ambush to yell at the various column drivers to back up and get out of the kill zone.
** The show possibly has tracer rounds used accurately, too; that is, the tracer rounds are only every couple of bullets, with rounds you can't see going out in-between them. Military fiction practically never gets this right.
** In Nathaniel Fick's own account of the invasion, ''Literature/OneBulletAway'', he actually does point out an instance where Encino Man orders the platoon to attack a structure believed to contain feyadeen. Specifically, they were to attack on foot across three hundred meters of open terrain with no cover, with LAV fire support directly behind them as opposed to to either side, risking massive amounts of friendly fire.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdaQHTWT_ZI "Always run in a serpentine fashion"]] as Wright shows us... which is shown to be slower and more awkward than just running in a straight line, leaving him in the sniper's line of fire for longer.

* ImprobableAimingSkills: Everyone in the platoon feels sore at Trombley for an incident where he shot a pair of civilians [[spoiler:who turned out to be unarmed children.]] At the same time, they respect Trombley's skill because he only fired a few shots but still managed to hit both of his targets multiple times center mass at over 200 meters ''from a moving vehicle.'' In the book, Wright relates his mixed feeling about the shooting; he's dismayed by the child's injury, but admits that when Trombley was on the gun, he couldn't help feeling a little safer.

* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: In the series, Sixta's usual 'I am your typical hardass officer, you must obey all my pointless peacetime regulations' schtick to give the Marines someone to unify in hatred against falters into apparently genuine anger he lays into Garza for losing his helmet. Given that gear accountability is SeriousBusiness in the military, he would have been totally justified had he [=NJP'd=] Garza.

* RedShirt: Mostly averted. Out of the main group, you get to know everyone to a certain degree, and the only people hurt were Sgt. Larry Shawn "Pappy" Patrick and Corporal Evan "Q-tip" Stafford, both of whom we got to know fairly well. Both survived, and Stafford's injury was so minor that he wasn't even medevac'ed out. Pappy returned to combat after the events of the book. Played straight in the miniseries with Gunnery Sergeant David Dill and Staff Sergeant Ray Valdez, who were injured in a minefield. We get to know them a bit better in the book, though.

*** Which Person later "pimped out" to someone in Bravo Three for some PEQ-4 Batteries before he got a chance to give it back to Wright.

** Anytime the Marines are performing actual recon it's shortly ended by the US military blowing it up for one reason or another with the series' largest explosions.

* SociopathicSoldier: Lance Corporal Harold Trombley, once again. He's explicitly stated to be type II and even provides the page quote for the trope. While his fellow marines are disgusted by him shooting children during an assault, they are also impressed by the accuracy it required and eventually jokingly nickname him ''Whopper Jr''.

* ThoseTwoGuys: Encino Man and Casey Kasem, who are depicted as causing quite a few problems for First Recon.
* TropeCodifier: The miniseries reasonably shares the title of defining the 21st-century military in media with ''Film/BlackhawkDown''.

* TheWatson: Wright.
-->'''Wright:''' What's a POG?[[note]]'''P'''eople '''O'''ther than '''G'''runts, i.e. non-combat Marines, and viewed with complete disdain by all combat Marines[[/note]]; Why is [[SpeechImpediment your voice]] [[Film/TheGodfather like that?]]

* YouLookFamiliar: Sort of. Eric Kocher played Gunnery Sgt. Rich Barrett. Simultaneously, Owain Yeoman played Sgt. Eric Kocher. David Simon just has a thing for this on varying levels: Jeff Carisalez is also in the series, though he doesn't play himself ala Rudy Reyes, and, humorously, plays an ''invented'' character. Inversely, the real Ray Person read for himself, but being five years older, out of the Marines, settled down in life and not on Ripped Fuel, he was far too calm and sane to play the 2003 version of himself.