History Literature / TheHuntForRedOctober

* ArtisticLicenseShips: Very few Soviet submarines were ever given official names, yet all of the Soviet submarines with viewpoint characters aboard - the Red October itself, the pursuing Konovalov, and the ill-fated ''Politovskiy'' - are named.

** When a KGB agent thinks it's a good idea to break out a cigarette and lighter next to a patient who's on 100% oxygen, the attending doctor suspects him of attempting this. Ultimately averted; the KGB agent wasn't actually attempting to murder the patient, but merely too arrogant to consider the possibility that a hospital's "No Smoking" signs might be there for a reason. When the doctor explains what would've happened had he lit up, he's horrified.

* ChromosomeCasting: As both the Soviet and American navies were all-male services, there are next to no female characters in the book. The two most significant female characters are an FBI agent and Greer's secretary.

** A minor one, but early on it's mentioned that Ramius has taken out the first of each class of sub for decades, and only had a minor incident on the first ''Alfa''. Later it's explained that the ''Politovskiy'' is the first of the ''Alfa''s, and that during its first cruise it hit a whale at full speed but the captain managed to save the ship and crew. Ramius was the captain of the ''Politovskiy'' when it hit the whale. Then in the climax, Ramius kills an ''Alfa'' by ramming it - having been on one that was nearly lost due to ramming, he knows exactly how to hit one to make it die.

** Several of Ramius' officers have similar stories of being screwed over and subjected to indignities by the state. One was repeatedly denied promotion for ''decades'' because his parents, despite being loyal Communists, were Jewish; another was sexually propositioned by a superior officer, and was subsequently ''punished'' for reporting the impropriety because the man was the son of an extremely high-ranking party official.

* ChromosomeCasting: As both the Soviet and American navies were all-male services, there are next to no female characters in the book.

** A minor one, but early on it's mentioned that Ramius has taken out the first of each class of sub for decades, and only had a minor incident on the first ''Alfa''. Later it's explained that the ''Politovskiy'' is the first of the ''Alfa''s, and that during its first cruise it hit a whale at full speed but the captain managed to save the ship and crew. Ramius was the captain of the ''Politovskiy'' when it hit the whale.

* EveryoneKnowsMorse: {{Justified|Trope}}: the British Signals Officer is the one who sends the message via blinker from HMS ''Invincible'' to the ''Red October''. It is described as a slow and rather jerky process since the officer is a bit rusty at it. On the other hand, Ramius knowing Morse is entirely believable, since he's from an older school of military.

* TheMutiny: {{Inverted}}, {{Lampshaded}}, and glibly noted to be [[NoExceptYes academic]]. An American officer calls it a mutiny, only to be told that "mutiny" is when the crew rises against officers. When the ''officers'' try to steal their ship, the correct term is "barratry". Doesn't mean that the Kremlin's not going to be furious someone stole their SuperPrototype boat.

** Ramius' father, Aleksandr, was a distinguished political commissar in the 40s. Marko was deeply ashamed to be the son of a true Stalinist hero

* RupturedAppendix: Due to drunkenness while on duty, a surgeon botched removing an inflamed appendix from the wife of [[spoiler:Marko Ramius]], the organ bursting because the doctor took too long to try to sober up by breathing pure oxygen.[[note]]The wife's death at the hands of a doctor that [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections couldn't be punished because he was the son of a senior Party official]] is what drives [[spoiler:Captain Ramius]] to defect.[[/note]]

* HoistByHisOwnPetard: A SleazyPolitician who had repeatedly butted heads with the CIA over his fishing for information [[HauledBeforeASenateSubcommittee during the committees he chaired.]] He eventually got [[TheMole a CIA-turned agent]] killed. The CIA began to investigate him and learned that he was leaking info to an aide who was a DoubleAgent. Said aide was arrested for espionage and treason, allowing the CIA to pressure him into retiring in order to prevent his name being tied to the scandal.
* HotSubOnSubAction: The primary focus of the naval scenes is the cat-and-mouse game played by NATO and Soviet submarines, with the climax involving actual combat between the ''Red October'' and the ''Konavalov'', with the ''Dallas'' being restricted from directly assisting by the rules of engagement limiting it to defensive fire only.

** Inverted during the final showdown, the [[ThePoliticalOfficer political officer]] of the Soviet submarine ''Konovalov'' is worried about the American subs protecting ''Red October''. Captain Tupolev replies that he will ignore ''Dallas'' and ''Pogy'' and points out that if the Americans had authorization to shoot (which they only did if they were shot at first), one of them would have already sunk ''Konovalov''. Tupolev is still operating under his original mission orders and already has permission to shoot ''Red October'', but he cannot shoot at the Americans.
* InformedFlaw: Ivan Putin is characterized as an evil man with no conscience; he only appears in a single chapter of the book, during which he exhibits none of these tendencies. His biggest sin is simply being annoying and blathering on about how pretty Gorky is in the winter.

** Ramius' main motive was to punish the state for the fact that [[CrusadingWidower his wife had died]] in a botched operation directed by a surgeon who had got the job from [[UpperClassTwit Party Patronage]], compounded by faulty medicine that did nothing to improve Mrs. Ramius' health. Further, what he considers the greatest crime is the State's suppression of religion that robbed him of "the hope, even if it ''was'' a lie", of seeing his wife again.

* KansasCityShuffle: The CIA's plan to fool the Soviet Navy is based on convincing them that their cover story (that Ramius was framed by a plant) is true by acting as if they too are baffled by the events and conducting massive inquiries.

** One of first actions taken by Ramius is to break Ivan Putin's neck and then set it up to look like he slipped on spilled tea and fell backwards into the corner of a table. This is largely done to fool Doctor Petrov and the enlisted men so that they would not discover the officers' plans.

* CriticalStaffingShortage: The [[HotSubOnSubAction final act]] (at least in the book version) gives some additional difficulties to the people that remain on the titular missile sub because they're twenty people handing a ship designed to be run by a crew of roughly a hundred and twenty. An earlier sub-plot [[AdaptedOut excised from the movie version]] involved the running of an [[BreakOutTheMuseumPiece about-to-be-decommissioned]] American sub to the spot where the ''Red October'' was to be "sunk" and be destroyed in its stead, while also being only staffed by about a dozen officers who had to do multiple duties, like an engineer working as a cook when off-shift.

* DamageControl: The sub takes damage in a fight with another sub and has to be repaired.

* ChromosomeCasting

* ChekhovsGunman: Loginov, the cook's assistant who witnessed Ramius taking the political officer's keys, [[spoiler:is the GRU sleeper agent]].

* ChekhovsGun: A minor one, but the ''Politovskiy'' gets mentioned as one of Ramius's only missteps, when a crash into a whale nearly sinks the ship, but Marco manages to save the ship and crew. Later on, the ''Politovskiy'', as one of the ships sent to pursue the ''Red October'', suffers a fatal reactor failure that kills the crew. Its death has one last part to play, when the only survivor, a cook, plays as an in-universe RedHerring to the Russians, believing that he was possibly a member of the crew of the October.

* BurningTheShips: Ramius sends a letter to the [[ThePoliticalOfficer chief political officer]] of the Soviet Navy stating that he and his command staff are defecting. When his staff officers ask him why he did it, he says the knowledge that there is no way back will strengthen their motivation and commitment.

The [[Film/TheHuntForRedOctober 1990 film adaptation]] stars Creator/SeanConnery, playing the Lithuanian captain Marko Ramius, and Alec Baldwin, playing Jack Ryan.

* TheMutiny: Inverted. An American officer calls it a mutiny, only to be told that "mutiny" is when the crew rises against officers. When the ''officers'' try to steal their ship, the correct term is "barratry".

* SocietSuperscience: ZigZaggedTrope: While the ''Red October's'' caterpillar drive is incredibly advanced tech (thus making the submarine the MacGuffin of the story), the sub as a whole (even if the most advanced vehicle the Soviets had devised) is still laughably far behind American submarine technology (to the point that one of the [[CrowningMomentOfFunny Crowning Moments Of Funny]] of the book is Jones looking over the ''Red October's'' communications systems and fixing them with ease (they had been "sabotaged" earlier) while deeming them unbelievably old-school compared to the Dallas'... and the ''Red October'''s communications officer is standing right next to him, taking offense at that).

* AndIMustScream: The final fate of the ''Konovalov' and its crew: ripped in half by the ''Red October'' [[RammingAlwaysWorks ramming it]], it is unable to stop itself from sinking to the bottom, and to those crewmen who survived the crash, the fact that the distress buoy got stuck on the sub's tower means that what awaits them is a slow death by suffocation.

* ArbitraryMinimumRange: Russian torpedoes have a safety feature that will only arm the torpedo when it is a safe distance away from the ship that fired it. Captain Ramius knows this so he [[spoiler:steers his submarine toward an incoming torpedo so the torpedo does not have time to arm itself and bounces harmlessly off the sub's hull]]. The pursuing sub then deactivates the safety feature for its next shot so the torpedo no longer has a minimum range. [[spoiler: ''[[BatmanGambit Just like Ramius wanted]].'' His ''next'' trick is to redirect the resulting unsafetied torpedo into [[HoistByHisOwnPetard destroying the attacking sub!]] ]]

* BasedOnATrueStory: the story was inspired by a real-life mutiny on board a Soviet frigate (the ''Storozhevoy'', mentioned in the book) in 1975, but differs in several key respects from it. Most notably in that Valery Sablin (the real-life mutineer) was attempting to ignite a second, anti-Stalinist bolshevik revolution, rather than flee to the west in his lust for blue jeans and Coca-Cola.

* BuzzJob:

** Later in the book a flight of A-10s buzz a Russian cruiser and shoot off flares to send a message.

* MakeItLookLikeAnAccident: One of first actions taken by Ramius is to break Ivan Putin's neck and then set it up to look like he slipped on spilled tea and fell backwards into the corner of a table. This is largely done to fool Doctor Petrov and the enlisted men so that they would not discover the officers' plans.

* ShownTheirWork: The portrayal of submarine life and submarine warfare is pretty realistic -- in some cases, too realistic, as some of the technology got Clancy a visit from the government to find out how he knew about it, as it was classified top secret at the time.

The first and [[FirstInstallmentWins most famous]] novel by Creator/TomClancy, first published in 1984. It is the fourth novel to take place chronologically in the [[Literature/JackRyan Ryanverse]].

* ArbitraryMinimumRange: Russian torpedoes have a safety feature that will only arm the torpedo when it is a safe distance away from the ship that fired it. Captain Ramius knows this so he [[spoiler:steers his submarine toward an incoming torpedo so the torpedo does not have time to arm itself and bounces harmlessly off the sub's hull]]. The pursuing sub then deactivates the safety feature for its next shot so the torpedo no longer has a minimum range. [[spoiler: ''[[BatmanGambit Just like Ramius wanted]].'' His ''next'' trick is to redirect the unsafetied torpedo into [[HoistByHisOwnPetard destroying the attacking sub!]] ]]

* ArbitraryMinimumRange: Russian torpedoes have a safety feature that will only arm the torpedo when it is a safe distance away from the ship that fired it. Captain Ramius knows this so he [[spoiler:steers his submarine toward an incoming torpedo so the torpedo does not have time to arm itself and bounces harmlessly off the sub's hull]]. The pursuing sub then deactivates the safety feature for its next shot so the torpedo no longer has a minimum range. [[spoiler: ''[[BatmanGambit Just like Ramius wanted]].'' His ''next'' trick is to [[HoistByHisOwnPetard destroying the attacking sub with its own unsafetied torpedo!]] ]]

* ArbitraryMinimumRange: Russian torpedoes have a safety feature that will only arm the torpedo when it is a safe distance away from the ship that fired it. Captain Ramius knows this so he [[spoiler:steers his submarine toward an incoming torpedo so the torpedo does not have time to arm itself and bounces harmlessly off the sub's hull]]. The pursuing sub then deactivates the safety feature for its next shot so the torpedo no longer has a minimum range.