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The Neidermeyer
(aka: Tyrannical Commander)

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The Neidermeyer (trope)
"The beatings will continue until morale improves!"
Neidermeyer: What's that on your chest, mister?
Flounder: It's a pledge pin, sir.
Neidermeyer: A PPPLEDGE PPPIN?! On your UNIFORM?! Just tell me, mister, what fraternity would pledge a man like you?
Flounder: It's a Delta pin, sir.
Neidermeyer: You'll report to the stable tonight and every night at 1900 hours, AND WITHOUT THAT PLEDGE PIN! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?! [...] You're all worthless and weak! Now drop and give me twenty!

The military equivalent of the Sadist Teacher.

A commanding officer with zero respect for his troops, and probably plenty for himself. He clearly, and often egregiously, displays incompetence, cowardice, inexperience, willingness to sacrifice his men for his own glory while keeping himself safely out of harm's way, an obsessive desire to get promoted, or is just a psychotic-level hardass. As a result, his authority is resented by the men in the trenches, and his orders are only obeyed because chain-of-command says so.

In more upbeat war shows, he's usually forced to learn An Aesop about his awful command style and adjust his behavior in a way that either changes him into a likable officer or results in his resignation, demotion, or transfer to a more suitable post. In these cases, this character is portrayed sympathetically.

In more cynical war movies, there will be no escape from this petty and obnoxious brute, and the men simply grouse and wait for the day someone on the opposing side will get lucky and catch him in the crosshairs. In some cases, he'll usually be the villain of the story. The troops might even conspire to frag him themselves if they get tired of waiting for the enemy to do the job.

If he is too tough to frag, though, the (un)lucky survivor of his tirades will become either a Yes-Man with no more backbone than he started off with, with a sense of "loyalty" to him, or The Dragon who seeks to become his successor when he dies/moves on. In a best-case scenario, the successor may show much competence and merely view the man as a Cynical Mentor or Drill Sergeant Nasty, but not always. In this case, the other troops will remain as spiteful as ever, but find that the converted will easily take care of any sort of mutiny they try to pull off.

A Drill Sergeant Nasty just acts like one, with the purpose of turning recruits into soldiers. A Sergeant Rock may act like one but is nonetheless held in high regard because he wouldn't put his men through anything he wouldn't go through himself. The Neidermeyer may believe he is either or both.

If he's a crusty, tough-as-nails long-term veteran commanding officer who has lost touch with reality and is filled with irrational hatred and paranoia against a specific foe, he's a General Ripper.

See also Miles Gloriosus for a broader application of this trope.

This trope goes often goes hand in hand with The Peter Principle: the leader has simply advanced or been promoted to a level too high for his capabilities.

Also goes hand in hand with Weakness Is Just a State of Mind, where the leader thinks that someone's lack of drive is a deliberate decision, rather than a medical problem or depletion of strength.

The inverse of this trope is "A Father to His Men" (into which the Neidermeyer may well evolve). There is also the Veteran Instructor, an instructor who has distinguished himself in battle and now is teaching new recruits, fully cognizant and respectful of the realities of war and training, which typically earns considerable respect from his trainees. In many cases, a General Failure is basically a Neidermeyer with greater rank and thus even more scope for causing damage. If the Neidermeyer is a temporary replacement for the usual Reasonable Authority Figure, it may also be a Tyrant Takes the Helm story. The Sister Trope - a low-ranking leader, such as a non-commissioned officer, lacking in authority or hated by his men is Gung Holier Than Thou.

Named after the infamous blowhard ROTC commander Doug Neidermeyer from the movie Animal House.

Fun fact: "Neider" in German means "Envier", making Neidermeyer's name a Meaningful Name.

Completely unrelated to the founding editor of CurbsideClassic.com. Or the Hockey Hall of Famer.

See A Doormat to His Men, for the converse of this trope.


Example subpages:

Other examples:

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    Anime and Manga 
  • Miwa Sakimori from Daimos is this, and a General Ripper. He mostly hides behind his soldiers or Daimos itself from danger. And when opportunity presents itself, he'll show his extreme racist tendencies by shooting actually harmless Brahmins. And all that's in his mind is... well, you guessed it, promotions.
  • Brigadier General Fessler from Fullmetal Alchemist might have set a record in shortest time between showing up and being offed by his own troops: a few pages, or a few minutes in-story time. In his few pages of life, his only plan of attack in a guerrilla war is to charge, he only thinks of glory for himself, and when the enemy attempts to surrender he refuses, at which point a very different commander archetype, Colonel Basque Grand has had enough and shoots him at point-blank range so that he can take command. Maes Hughes' immediate reaction is to deem the shot a stray bullet, and everyone agrees (no planning was involved).
  • Isen Ryer in Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team is one of these - he spends his entire time suspecting Shiro Amada of betraying the Federation and sends a GM Sniper on him when he finally deserts; has a We Have Reserves mentality towards his troops, going so far as use his own men to detonate their own Mobile Suits to destroy a Zeon base and thinks nothing but the idea of being promoted.
  • One Piece:
    • Ax-Hand Morgan gives Luffy an extra reason to kick some ass by executing dissenters and making everything about himself while abusing his authority. You even find out later the only reason he was promoted to a position of authority was because of Kuro's Batman Gambit which involved hypnotizing Morgan and everyone else into thinking he captured the notorious Captain Kuro. Morgan was so universally hated by his soldiers that when Luffy beat him up, the Marines under his command started cheering and promptly let Luffy go with no strings attached other than asking he leave the town.
    • Spandam is a smug, moronic, needlessly cruel brat who can't fight for crap and has no apparent reason for his position besides that his dad had the job before him. The fact that the assassins under his command are some of the deadliest government operatives in the Grand Line doesn't help his ability to command them any; they'll regularly ignore his commands or mock him. Spandam himself doesn't really care about his assassins either, seeing them as expendable tools for any promotion he aspires to have.
  • Sergeant Keroro is a cowardly, lazy, egotistical Manchild who'd rather play with toys all day than actually do his job and conquer the planet. But nobody except Giroro hates him for this.
  • General Colbert from Tekkaman Blade is also a real piece of work. Much like Miwa, he too is a racist (so much so he works with Murata Azrael in both Super Robot Wars J AND W), treats The Hero like a traitorous piece of filth even though he's the most effective means of defeating the Radam. Add in the fact he's also a pretty shameless General Ripper as well, and you've got a total asshole of a Neidermeyer as a result.
  • Itsuki Marude from Tokyo Ghoul is established as a loud-mouthed Jerkass primarily interested in making himself look good. Everything points towards him being this, until he's actually out in the field as Commander — when his troops are pinned down by a sniper, he berates several for not doing anything. Then he snatches a rifle from one and takes the sniper out with a single shot. For the rest of the operation, he proves to be a skilled commander concerned about the well-being of his men. He's still an over-bearing, self-important asshole, though.
  • Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid: Charlotte is second in authority only to Akira and is this trope to a ridiculous degree. Taking every possible opportunity to Kick the Dog, resorting to violence and murder for every little thing... Akira of all people really should have found a more mentally stable person to be in Charlotte's position.

    Comic Books 
  • Combat Kelly and his Deadly Dozen: In a Crossover with Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos, Captain Conner, the martinet son of a general, is given command of both the Deadly Dozen and the Howling Commandos. He cracks under the strain of facing real combat for the first, and his indecision nearly gets both the Dozen and the Howlers killed, forcing Fury to relieve him of command.
  • In the original Creature Commandos stories, Lt. Matthew Shrieve is a lot like this, though he's very much a competent soldier. He's cruel towards the "monsters" under his authority, whom he finds disgusting. He's even described them as an affront to God; the feeling is all too mutual.
  • In the Golden Age MAD feature "Sheik of Araby!", Sergeant Guillotine disciplines his troops with Comedic Sociopathy and forces them to keep fighting when they get seriously wounded:
    Soldat: Serjeant! I 'ave a bullet hole between mine eyes! May I seek le first aid?
    Sergeant Guillotine: [Pistol-Whipping him] Slackair! Eet ees a superficial wound! Back to ze fight!
  • Perhaps not surprisingly, an issue of Garth Ennis's Preacher features two examples of these. One is an incompetent lieutenant who gets a VietCong bullet when he's dumb enough to wear his officer's stripes bars while on patrol, and the other is a Jerkass sergeant who Jesse's father and Spaceman kill after he gets one of their friends killed.
  • Major Magnam from the Rogue Trooper story of the same name; his domineering, arrogant personality and contempt for regular soldiers lead to a Souther squad being slaughtered when they try to take a very well-fortified Nort installation. Rogue ends up sticking his biochip into a special containment device and keeping the gun on which it had been stored.
  • In the Elseworlds mini-series Superman & Batman: Generations by John Byrne, Superman's powerless son Joel Kent becomes this sort of officer and is shot by his own men in Vietnam.
  • Battle's classic World War I story Charley's War has several examples:
    • Most officers tend to fall under this category, but the worst of all the Lieutenant Snell. He actually makes Charley wait until he's had his tea before reading the message Charley had risked his life to bring him, asking for support for his overwhelmed comrades. This is just after knocking Charley out and using him as a human shield. To him, soldiers are simply expendable and the war is just a sport with him holding a Body-Count Competition with other officers while they shoot wounded Germans during ceasefires. He even gets Charley's unit wiped out on the final day of the war in one last, pointless push that finally resulted in his death after being corroded by an acid sprayer. Mills considers him the Big Bad of the strip.
    • Lieutenant "Monkey Face" Volmar is Blue's hated commanding officer in the Legion, who—according to Blue—tend to punish his soldiers for disobeying his orders even if they are often inflexible and futile to achieve. He develops a deep personal hatred towards Blue and their coming to blows is what leads Blue to desert. Not that the French officer corp was better since they sent in a group of untrained Sengelese soldiers to the front as part of the "test" to see their performance in trench warfare, which their lack of knowledge in dealing with machine guns nearly got them annihilated.
    • Sergeant Bacon is an NCO example. As a military police NCO, he makes the lives of Charley, Ginger and Weeper hell when they get temporary respite from the trenches back at the camp. He is in charge of administering "Field Punishment No.1", which involves drilling soldiers at high speed in full kit, lugging rocks over and back and lashing them to the wheels of artillery pieces for up to two hours a day. He also arranges "parties", which is basically tying the offending soldier to a tent pole and administering a beating. He's also a coward, with the implication that he joined the Military Police to avoid being sent to the front.
    • The Scholar is a milder example in that he started out as a regular Tommy and got recommended to go on an officers' training course. When he returns, he shows his inexperience and is pompous around Charley.
    • Most of the training staff at Etaples are horrible individuals, who take sadistic pleasure in putting experienced soldiers through Training from Hell to the point where the entire camp mutinies.
  • Star Wars Empire: Captain Gage ineptly leads the enlisted men he looks down on into ambushes, constantly cowers in terror rather than do anything useful, and spitefully lies about whether junior officer Sunber got a field promotion from their dead commander.
  • Star Wars: Ewoks: General Koyotta is cowardly and entitled in his dealings with his bounty hunter escorts and, back when he had actual Imperial troops under his command, he sees nothing wrong with all of them dying to conserve air for him as the highest ranking officer present (whether they did so voluntarily or not is something that no one has anything but his word for).

    Comic Strips 
  • Sergeant Snorkel in Beetle Bailey, but far more so Lt. Fuzz. Whenever he gets the opportunity to command troops. Snorkel's men do respect him as a soldier - they just really don't want to be soldiers, and are rarely seen in the field (which for the strip means war games and exercises) where this becomes apparent. Fuzz tries to copy Snorkel's treatment of subordinates and adds in his complete incompetence and desperation for recognition.
    • Mort Walker admitted that he based Lt. Fuzz on himself as a young officer, who was obsessed with doing absolutely everything by the book.
  • Colonel G. Armageddon Fluster of the 6 7/8 Cavalry in Tumbleweeds.

    Fan Works 
  • Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): In this Godzilla MonsterVerse fanfiction, Alan Jonah doesn't start out as this but he quickly ends up this way as his Sanity Slippage progresses. Two of Jonah's soldiers are outraged that Jonah doesn't even think about his men's welfare when refusing to get them away from the severed Ghidorah head's Brown Note, and once Jonah's Tested on Humans is exposed, one of the Mook Lieutenants is blinded by rage, whilst another of Jonah's troops doesn't need much further prompting before she pulls a Screw This, I'm Outta Here!.
  • The Secret Return of Alex Mack: Colonel Leonetti of the Italian Army totally mishandles the silicates situation, dismisses Terawatt, ignores advice from everyone else who has actual experience, relies instead on Five Rounds Rapid, and gets his own men eaten. Alex promptly dubs him "Colonel Stupidetti" for it and makes sure he isn't responsible for any more supervillain situations.
  • Tarkin's Fist: The Imperial High Command is riddled with these. Convinced by their experiences in the Clone Wars that conquering a technologically inferior faction like the Earth will be an easy affair, the Imperial High Command finds itself totally unprepared for the protracted meat grinder the planet turns out to be. They largely prove unable to adapt, pushing the Imperial Army on Earth to the brink of mutiny. Imperial Commissars appointed by Theater Commander Vulnert Seco prove so incompetent and wasteful that they manage to drive the clones under their command into open desertion during the invasion of New Zealand.

    Music 

    Radio 
  • In The Navy Lark Captain Povey frequently falls into this category with his obsession for hounding the Troutbridge crew out of the Navy. To be fair, the crew of the Troutbridge are completely incompetent/derelict in their duties.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Captain Jasper Stone from Deadlands was a really bad version of this. He was shanked by his own troops in the Battle of Gettysburg... only to rise as an undead and become Death's right-hand man.
  • In Dungeons & Dragons the piscoloths are described as the sergeants of the yugoloth race. They are so cruel to their subordinates that said subordinates tend to gang up and murder them whenever given half the chance.
  • Exalted:
    • Excessively righteous Blossom. His military career was marked by repeatedly getting a battalion whittled down to about company size, and he made it very clear to everyone who would listen that he viewed this as a result of the incompetence of his soldiers. Especially hilarious since he is very talented - at personal combat - but has exactly no ability to recognise what his talents are, leading to both military and civilian careers crafted from incompetence and menacing with spikes of fail.
    • Tepet Lisara also qualifies. Out of jealousy, she got her cousin, an actually competent officer, removed from command, and devised the strategy that effectively ruined her House's standing within the Realm. Though that particular failure is never realized, she is still Reassigned to Antarctica for general incompetence, where she delights in assigning up-and-coming male officers to menial or suicidal tasks for petty amusement.
  • Most of the Commissars in Warhammer 40,000. In fact, in certain editions, the 'Nam-inspired Catachan Jungle Fighters require a special saving roll before the game even starts to prevent them from fragging the Commissar (Oops, sorry sir!).
    • Similar to the Dinobots example listed below, one of the reasons Imperial doctrine normally prohibits Space Marine commanders from leading large-scale actions and campaigns in which the Marines and Imperial Guard fight together is that they tend to work the normal troops as hard as their Super-Soldier battle brothers, often with fatal results.
    • Common Imperial Guard tactics employed usually boil down to "throw men at it by the regiment like a battering ram until it breaks." A noted battle cry of commissars is, "We will drown them in our blood and crush them under the weight of our own dead!"
    • Every Imperial Guard officer above Lieutenant (and sometimes below) is either incompetent, a jerk, a glory hound, cowardly, or any combination of those. This goes up even into the Munitorium.
    • The officers of the Death Korps of Krieg are a weird subversion- they are possibly the most brutal commanders in the Imperium and treat their men like they're completely expendable. But the men don't care because they believe they are expendable, a Korpsman's sole purpose is to take an enemy bullet and quietly die to make room for the next one. In Krieg regiments, the Commissar's job is to prevent soldiers getting themselves killed in pointless attacks.
    • A Medal of Dishonor goes to Lord General Lugo, whose first act in Honor Guard is to order Gaunt and his men to step up their attack timetable to retake a holy temple, which subsequently explodes into a warp vortex (long story). He pins the whole thing on Gaunt and assigns Gaunt to lead a convoy as punishment. He shows up again in Sabbat Martyr, where he's playing a minor character from his previous appearance as the reincarnated Saint Sabbat. This time, however, fate bites him in the ass when the girl actually becomes the reincarnated saint (again, long story), and he spends much of the rest of the book standing around looking dumbstruck, which for him, is not much of a stretch.
    • Subverted by Ciaphas Cain, naturally, who is certainly aware of this trope. He treats his men well and while he does genuinely care about them, he finds comfort in the fact that not being like every other Commissar in the guard greatly reduces his chance of being the victim of friendly fire. He actually comments on how a great many Commissars die "heroic deaths" suspiciously far from the front lines. He spent his later years attempting to teach commissar cadets to subvert this trope, with admittedly mixed success (most who are chosen for the Commissariat are simply not the right personality type to be taught how to lead through respect rather than fear). Cain certainly wants to avoid such a fate; "I want to die in a bed, preferably someone else's."
    • Same goes for Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt, who deals with so many straight examples in his career that when he comes under the command of the competent, friendly and reasonably General Van Voytz, he responds like an animal confused why a predator isn't eating him!
    • On the other hand, there's the legendary Lord Commander Solar Macharius, whose armies conquered a thousand worlds for the Emperor in the space of seven years. There's also Lord Castellan Ursarkar Creed of the Cadian 8th, Colonel "Iron Hand" Straken of Catachan, and Commissar Yarrick, who wears a Power Klaw he ripped off of an Ork Warboss, all of whom are competent and admired by their men.
    • In the computer spin-off Dawn of War, Imperial Priests often shout "WE LOST BECAUSE YOU'RE ALL WEAK!" when their squad regains morale.
    • There was Commander Kubrik Chenkov of the Valhallan Ice Warriors is an extreme example of this. His main tactic is sending legions of his own men straight at the enemy base without tank or artillery support or using them to draw enemy fire for his other forces, but unlike most cases, his tactics really work.
    • Similarly, some Space Marine commanders are capable of commanding large-scale operations; Marneus Calgar of the Ultramarines, Azrael of the Dark Angels, and Logan Grimnar of the Space Wolves have all had success in commanding Imperial Guard troops.
  • In Warhammer Fantasy Battle 3rd Edition scenario "Fornerond's Last Stand", the High Elf general Fornerond Breezenimble (who happens to get killed immediately before the actual battle) is described to have been a completely incompetent nincompoop.

    Video Games 
  • Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War:
    • Orson Perrault, the commander of the protagonists' airbase, is this as well as corpulent, a horrible shot (he doesn't know that how emptying the magazine into the doorway where the targets were when the lights went out is a bad idea), and without giving Wardog Squadron and Pops a chance to explain themselves he assumes them all to be spies. Somewhat mitigated by the fact that Hamilton convinced him that they were spies before they even landed, and that Pops had a past of his own that put him under suspicion.
    • Lieutenant Colonel Ford attempts to land his plane on Sand Island despite the island being under attack and being told to wave off by the base. When Chopper lets slip that he thinks he's completely nuts and/or stupid, Ford threatens to write him up when he lands. It gets cut off when an enemy plane shoots him down.
  • Colonel Mckinsey from Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown is a real piece of work that makes Perrault look like a saint in comparison. Unlike Perrault, who is willing to fight on the frontlines when his base falls under attack, McKinsey would rather have a desk job than fight on the front lines. He also hoards all of Spare Squadron’s accomplishments to himself, and will throw any disobedience or criticism, no matter how minor, into solitary confinement. He’s so reprehensible, that even AWACS Bandog doesn’t like him, and in the mission Transfer Orders, Trigger can shoot down his transport plane, and even though it will end the mission in failure, the player will be rewarded 1000 points for it, and Bandog will remark that the cargo was hardly worth protecting.
  • Advance Wars: Days of Ruin:
    • Admiral Greyfield. A complete coward and a sub-par commander whose greatest skills are taking credit for victories, and shifting blame for losses. He threatens execution for any failure to follow his orders to the letter, especially the order to win the battle. His cowardice is so much that he relentlessly hunts down any that don't adhere to absolute rule no matter how many of his own men are sacrificed or caught in the blast of the super weapon used to kill a single dissenting captain, even resorting to executing enemies after surrender. Lin even implied that he was a subpar commander at best and faked his results.
    • "Captain" Waylon (Note the quotation marks), who unsurprisingly ends up working for Greyfield, is another example. After you rescue him and his unit (and he leaves), his wingmen defect and join your unit specifically because he was this but they felt following him was the only way to stay alive in the apocalyptic wasteland.
  • Sergent Reynard in Amnesia: The Bunker is utterly despised by his men for being a needlessly cruel and belligerent bully to the men under his command, with it being implied he gets away with it (and potentially only holds the rank or sergent) because he manages to look good to the officers and is friends with M. Fournier, their commanding officer. He ends up being the first victim of The Beast, actually Lambert mutated into a feral form. Not only did he kill Reynard in a spectacularly more brutal fashion than any of his other victims, but this was before he had fully lost control of himself.
  • Battlefield: We are losing this battle! Start fighting or I will find someone who can! A few games (including some in this series) offer one player on each team a "command" role. Depending on the game, this role's importance varies from pivotal to merely important. Some games (thankfully) offer mechanisms to depose commanders who fit this trope.
  • Dwarf Fortress: Sufficiently unhappy nobles act this way, ordering beatings and hammerings to any dwarf that ignores (or is incapable of fulfilling) their demands. Unsurprisingly, players tend to respond to such behavior with their own form of capital punishment.
  • Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes: Prince Shahid of Almyra sees himself as a military genius, but in truth, he's an arrogant idiot whose strategies boil down to throwing an ungodly amount of troops at the enemy until they're dead. While the army he commands is huge, he has no clue how to effectively maintain it, meaning that most of his men are starving and demotivated. He's also a domineering bully towards them, sending them to their deaths while hurling insults and threats their way.
  • Frostpunk: Your predecessor captain in the Fall of Winterhome campaign was a vicious idiot who is singlehandedly responsible for the city's ruin, and for almost dragging other settlements into it from beyond the grave. First, if you've been playing the game long enough as soon as you start you can realize the whole city's been planned, all by him, in the stupidest of ways you'd only do if you had never played before, and passed the most authoritative, least supportive or helpful laws in the book that you cannot repeal, and loved enforcing them upon the populace. Then he drove the city's vital Generator (the one thing keeping the Antarctic-at-best temperatures at bay) to such extents and ignored so many warnings about it that he damaged it and nearly caused an explosion, and ordered half the city to be executed on the streets for rioting about it. And even after he got dragged out of office and repeatedly shot for being incompetent, the generator was so damaged its eventual explosion became inevitable, forcing everyone to either evacuate on a dreadnought with uncertain destination or freeze to death/get eaten by men freezing to death.
  • In Horizon Zero Dawn, the Nora brave Resh is named acting War Chief of the tribe in the absence of the regular War Chief, Sona, having gone missing during a disastrous reprisal attack against Eclipse after their slaughter at the Proving. Few of the remaining braves and volunteers are happy about it, and certainly not Aloy, whom he has a particular beef against because she is an Outcast elevated to a Brave, and then to a Seeker. Thankfully, there is a quest to find Sona and get her back to take command again.
  • Iji: The Tasen are clearly not fond of their leader Krotera, since he's proven himself to be a total Jerkass by outright stating that it's good that Komato blasted one of their planets because now there's less of their own to worry about and generally treating his troops like trash. Vateilika blasting him away in the Pacifist Run basically confirms this.
  • Iron Grip has the Fahrong/Confederacy, where apparently every officer above the Sergeant is this and everybody below it is Cannon Fodder.
  • Lt. Cole Phelps of L.A. Noire is such a Niedermeyer that it actually winds up driving most of the game's plot. Cole being paralysed with fear at a convenient moment ensured that he was the last man standing after a night fighting the Japanese on Okinawa, which made him a war hero and he rose rapidly through the LAPD as a result. His Marines, infuriated at this, decided to steal massive crates of guns and drugs from the military because they thought they deserved to get rewarded as well. Cole's order to burn out an enemy cave that turned out to be a field hospital gives one of his men massive PTSD and he is later revealed as the serial arsonist. This also so enrages the unit's medic that he actually shoots Cole in the back and later goes on to lead the aforementioned heist.
  • Zaeed Massani of Mass Effect 2 was apparently this, considering the fact that all his stories usually end with getting all of his men killed and info discovered in Lair of the Shadow Broker reveals that a major element for his betrayal by the Blue Suns was his inability to ensure loyalty. In fact, he's actually a poor choice for an end-game Fire Team/Distraction Leader.
  • Colonel Henry Favors from Red Dead Redemption 2 is an especially nauseating Neidermeyer; a cowardly, incompetent Drama Queen who humiliated himself and wrecked his career during the Civil War, he somehow got made liaison to the Wapiti Indian tribe in Ambarino, with hopes that he could keep the peace with them. He instead does everything in his power to anger, hurt, and provoke them in an idiotic attempt to start a war where he can “reclaim his honor” and make himself look like a hero to the brass back in Washington. Instead, they send Officer Lyndon Monroe to find out what the hell’s going on, and Favours ends up trying to frame Monroe for treason and murder him to keep his plans hidden. Ultimately, his provocations succeed in causing the war he wanted... only for it to end near-immediately when Favours gets himself (and most of his men) killed in the very first battle.
  • The Sengoku Basara portrayal of Mitsunari is also not far from this. A psychotic individual who was formerly a Sycophantic Servant to his lord Hideyoshi, he expected the same degree of fanatical loyalty. In his case, however, it wasn't so much that he was a jerk more that he's insane and had No Social Skills.
    • Mouri Motonari on the same game is even worse and has been around long before Mitsunari was included. Basically, this is a guy is a complete jerk who pretty much treats his own soldiers as nothing but pawns that he can toss into the middle of fire of his plans, with them dying in friendly fire in his plans that will also decimate his enemy. And he will claim that it's all his genius that brings victory, rather than the commitment and the sacrifices of his soldiers, meaning that he hogs all the glory. The soldiers do not question his authority at all despite the mistreatment, because Motonari is that much of a battle genius that they have no hope of winning if they don't follow his orders. This is also portrayed in gameplay, as Motonari is one of the few characters whose attacks will affect and damage allied troops, a trait shared with the resident Ax-Crazy Sadist monster, Akechi Mitsuhide.
  • Kraze and Kanaan from Suikoden I, who you'll grow to hate very much early on in the game. Kanaan is more or less a classic example of a real dirtbag who wants all the glory to himself but hides behind his soldiers. Kraze is more or less the same, but at least he he isn't given the option to be spared unlike most of the Imperial commanders.
  • Snowe from Suikoden IV. He gets severe shellshock in the first battle (on the first shot, no less), abandons his men, and develops a Honor Before Reason complex in order to make up for it. And because of his lineage, gets promoted beyond his competency.
  • Lee Linjun from Super Robot Wars Original Generation 2 quickly makes himself known as a complete jerk. He constantly argues with the pilots (especially Excellen and Katina), is clearly jealous of Tetsuya (even though Lee outranks him and commands a ship), and fully cements himself as a Neidermeyer when he makes it clear that everyone is expendable, and he really doesn't care if any member of the crew lives or dies. Then he just defects to the Shadow Mirrors. Lee apparently lost his wife and parents during the events of the first game (6-months prior) and hasn't had time to deal with his grief. He's too much of an ass for fans to feel much sympathy toward, but it does help explain his irrational behavior.
  • Due to the open-ended nature of the story, it is entirely possible that both brothers in Team Fortress 2 count as this. All of the mercs on both teams start haphazardly next to the other side, and can just run to battle in about 4 seconds, and everybody should die at least once. Given that the announcer seemed to be looking for this setup, it may be the brothers were intended to both become "the Neidermeyer".
  • General Damon of Valkyria Chronicles. A completely inept commander who only attained his rank because of his noble status. He holds all of the militia as Cannon Fodder, possibly all of Gallia's citizenry, as his solution for attacking a notably larger Imperial force is to draft all the citizens they could into the militia and throw them all on a frontal assault. Bastard even had the balls to claim Welkin's victory at Ghirlandaio as his own. Though Selvaria's Final Flame in the citadel made that a sort of good thing.
  • Captain Bannon from World in Conflict is this trope to a T, panicking when faced with opposition his men should be able to handle, whining when fighting at a disadvantage instead of focusing on how to keep the fight going favorably, deriding the player's character for his competence, and shooting enemy infantry who were trying to convey their wish to surrender by waving white flags. In the end, however, he becomes arguably the most heroic character among the Americans followed by the narrative, volunteering to sacrifice himself to a friendly nuclear weapon so the approaching enemy will plow towards him into the blast radius, as retreating would've clued the Soviets in that something was wrong.
  • Commonly invoked in World of Warcraft for various Alliance and Horde commanders. At this point, it's hard to tell whether they are the exceptions or the rule. The actual racial leaders (with the exception of Garrosh Hellscream) tend to avoid this trope, but the player character frequently has to deal with various NPCs/questgivers that do fit the trope, especially on the Horde side.

    Web Animation 
  • Sarge of Red vs. Blue is this type of leader, a bloodthirsty madman whose plans are fueled by his irrational hatred for the lazy and insubordinate Grif and his enemies the Blue team, being the only one to make Serious Business of the otherwise cold war between the two. Nonetheless, he is usually followed by the other soldiers, particularly the kiss-ass Yes-Man Simmons. Or he would be if he wasn't so funny. The best order he's ever given was "Scream like a woman!"
    • Sarge is an awful leader, but a brilliant Mad Scientist. To date: three robots, one with a 10-megaton nuclear warhead hidden inside of it, one cyborg, one weather control machine, and one successful transfer of cyborg's organs into a near-dead human.
    • He does show merit as a leader during several moments in season 8, most notably when he trusts Grif to help him take down Agent Washington, and later to help him rescue The Alpha device and take down The Meta.
    • He spends most of the series as this trope, then Character Development finally morphs him into Sergeant Rock late in the eighth season.
    • Simmons during his brief stint as leader of the Blood Gulch Reds.

    Webcomics 

    Western Animation 
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
    • Prince Zuko started out the series disliked by his crew, as he constantly pushed them while hunting for Aang. He eventually got a little better when Iroh told the crew about Zuko's seriously messed-up backstory, and Zuko risked his life to save a crewmember in the middle of a storm, allowing Aang to escape in the process. Zuko and the crew started to respect each other a little — at least enough for his second-in-command to stop challenging him to fights to the death.
    • Of course, this trope goes without saying for every member of the Fire Nation's top brass. For example, one of the officers knowingly planned to send an entire division of rookies to their deaths as a diversion. This was why Zuko was exiled, as he spoke against that act of cruelty and Ozai himself found Zuko's empathy disrespectful. Thus, Ozai's acts mean he enables Neidermeyers at best, if he isn't one himself.
  • Dick Dastardly, period, on his own show Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines. The General believes him incompetent (just there to collect flight pay), Zilly tries to shirk his duties, and Muttley isn't above using blackmail to weasel a medal from him. Klunk is the only pilot that gives him an iota of respect.
  • Capt Marcus of Exo Squad is the worst example. He's both a General Ripper and General Failure all rolled into one. His battle plans usually involve rushing to fight a foe without proper planning or preperation, then being overwhelmed by that foe while he either freezes up or panics.
  • Zapp Brannigan of Futurama, who's especially fond of saving himself by sacrificing those under his command. Samples:
    Bender: [with his Patriotism Circuits activated] Sir, I volunteer for a suicide mission!
    Zapp: You're a brave robot, son. But when I'm in command, every mission is a suicide mission.

    Zapp: Stop exploding, you cowards!

    Zapp: You see, Killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them, until they reached their limit and shut down. Kif, show them the medal I won.
    [Kif begrudgingly points at a prominent medal on Zapp's chest]

    Zapp: Whatever it is, I'm willing to put wave after wave of men at your disposal. Right men?
    [dead silence]
    Random Soldier: You suck!

    Zapp: We made it through, Kif. How many men did we lose?
    Kif: All of them.
    Zapp: Well, at least they won't have to mourn each other.

    Zapp: Nothing remains now but for the captain to go down with his ship.
    Kif: Why, that's surprisingly noble of you, sir.
    Zapp: No, it's noble of you, Kif. As of now, you're in command! [flees in an escape pod]
    • Lampshaded when he had to assign Fry (a soldier in that episode) a punishment, we get this exchange, showing that Kif is an even worse boss than Zapp:
      Zapp: Kif, what's the most humiliating task you can think of?
      Kif: Being your assistant.
      Zapp: Wrong! Being your assistant! Fry, from now on you are Kif's assistant!
      Fry: That doesn't sound too ba-
      Kif: YOU SPEAK ONLY WHEN SPOKEN TO YOU FILTHY WORM!
  • Mr. Peevly from Help! It's The Hair Bear Bunch!. Any respect the zoo animals give him is purely tongue-in-cheek.
  • In Invader Zim:
    • Zim is shown to be this type of leader in the episode Hobo-13 in that he needlessly sacrifices his squadmates so that he himself can get to the end of the obstacle course, including using his last remaining soldier as a battering ram to open a door. The Drill Sergeant (ironically played by R. Lee Ermey) who meets him at the end chooses to fail Zim due to his horrendous leadership skills and challenges him into combat in order to pass (which Zim does by cheating).
    • The Tallests are seen as worse than Zim, being a pair of petty, self-serving, and egomaniacal jerkasses, treating everyone beneath them with contempt and mockery, particularly the shorter Irkens. In fact, the Irkens are a race of Neidermyers.
  • Ratty from Mr. Bogus will often fill this role, whether it's bossing around his incompetent sidekick, Mole, or trying to one-up Bogus, without any success.
  • In The Simpsons, Principal Skinner was shot in the back when he was a sergeant in Vietnam when trying to get Joey Heatherton to put some pants on. The depiction of his army career is the same as his current one, just with soldiers replacing Willy. That's assuming he's telling the truth in any of his flashbacks, what with him not really being Seymour Skinner.
  • Star Wars:
    • Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Jedi Master Pong Krell has a reputation for getting more clone troopers killed under his command than any other Republic General. He's rude and dismissive to them, calls them by their numbers instead of their preferred nicknames, and orders them to attack head-on with no cover instead of taking their suggestions of better tactics. He's doing it on purpose, intending to defect to the Separatists after making a dent in the Republic's forces.
    • Star Wars Rebels: Admiral Konstantine, an arrogant and incompetent Glory Hound who only ever accomplishes anything when someone like Grand Admiral Thrawn is babysitting him, which he repays with resentment. This behavior ultimately gets him killed and costs the Empire a vital victory; during the Battle of Atollon, Konstantine is ordered to keep his ship (an Interdictor not meant for direct combat) in a safe position so the Rebels cannot escape via hyperspace, only to instead chase after Commander Sato's carrier when it looks like he's trying to flee, all for the sake of gaining personal glory for taking out the Rebel Leadership. Naturally, it turns out Sato was faking a retreat so he could turn and ram the Interdictor, destroying both ships and opening a path for a single rebel ship to escape and call for reinforcements.
  • Steven Universe: Holly Blue Agate from "Gem Heist" and "That Will Be All" is in charge of the Quartz guards at the Zoo, and she seems to have nothing but contempt for them or any other "lesser" Gem (like Pearls and Rubies) while relentlessly sucking up to "higher" Gems (like Sapphires and the Diamonds). Holly Blue's ill treatment of her subordinates leads to them just sitting back and laughing when the Crystal Gems defeat her in a humiliating fashion and escape with a kidnapped Greg in tow. Given how Yellow Diamond describes an Agate's purpose is to "terrify", it seems this behavior is standard procedure for Agates.
  • In The Transformers:
    • Megatron was competent but selfish. This and his ego led him to do quite a few stupid things and abandoning Devastator in one episode. To be fair, he was made out to be incompetent by the original cartoon's writers to match the standards for villains for the time. Later works show that he is far more brilliant and has the right amount of charisma to inspire and intimidate his subordinates into falling in-line.
    • Starscream himself usually ends up as one of these whenever he's given the reigns. He's no fool, being very book-smart and a skilled fighter, but he's a roundly terrible commander; he often ends up getting betrayed or losing control of his own plots. The comic book Spotlight: Megatron shows the titular character being positively enraged at Starscream after he managed to, in three years of the former's absence, turn the aftermath of what had been a decisive and wide-ranging Decepticon victory into a complete rout that left troops cannibalizing each other to avoid starvation. A later comic, The Transformers: Robots in Disguise, however, would reveal Starscream's true calling: politics.
    • The real gem, however, is Galvatron. While Megatron was always a tyrannical leader, he had enough competence to execute complex plans and motivated his troops through charisma as much as he did intimidation. His reformatted self dropped that to become an insane psychotic warfreak that ruined plans with his lack of self-control, abandoned his soldiers to unnecessary death on a whim, and shot at his own troops whenever he was mildly upset. Galvatron arguably did more damage to his own army than the Autobots ever could. Needless to say, if it weren't for a number of certain extenuating circumstances, the Decepticons would have recycled Galvatron a long time ago, no matter how powerful he was. Said circumstances mainly being that, because of the backstabbing treachery endemic in their ranks, the first thing that would happen when Galvatron got slagged would be civil war breaking out due to there being no clear-cut successor to Galvatron's rank. As they were currently stuck on a burned-out world and barely scraping together enough fuel, parts, and ammo to survive from day to day, any civil war would doubtlessly be fatal for the Decepticons. So they tolerate their abusive madman of a leader and hope that he'll bring them to victory over the Autobots in his more lucid periods.
    • Sentinel Prime from Transformers: Animated is an example this kind of character among the good guys. Even in his younger days, he had zero respect for his peers, blaming the more responsible Optimus for Elita-1's presumed death (on an excursion that was Sentinel's idea to begin with), and as soon as he gained a command of his own, promptly began treating his men like worthless garbage, causing poor Bumblebee and Bulkhead much pain and suffering. He remains a jerk in the present day, taking every opportunity to viciously mock Optimus and his team's lower positions.
    • Grimlock is occasionally shown to be a bit of a Neidermeyer in the comics when he's put in command of units other than the Dinobots, largely because most Autobots aren't used to doing things The Spartan Way like the Dinobots are and Grimlock being unwilling to accommodate them. When he briefly took over the Autobots he threw the rulebook out the window.
    • Many sub-commanders within the Decepticons fit into this trope, but none moreso than Motormaster, leader of the Stunticons. His team is a big ball of crazy, and he loves to do things like order the silence-fearing Wildrider to remain quiet on missions. The intense loathing that the rest of the Stunticons have for Motormaster causes their combined form Menasor to be utterly uncontrollable as none of his component minds are able to work with their leader's.
  • Yo Yogi!: Dick Dastardly usurps Yogi's position as the head of the LAF (Lost And Found) section of Jellystone Mall and becomes a Neidermeyer to Yogi's friends. Later on, two kidnappers trick him into abducting Augie Doggie and he's now afraid of being sent to prison. He tries to get Yogi's friends to help him rescue Augie but they won't follow him, so he brings Yogi back.


 
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Alternative Title(s): Captain Queeg, Hated By His Own Men, Colonel Irritant, Officer Jerkass, Tyrannical Commander

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Captain Becky Freeman

Captain Becky Freeman, a.k.a. Alternate Mariner, is a hardass who commands the ship with strict discipline, apparently half the ship was converted to a brig to handle minor infractions. She knows everyone hates her, and hates herself for what she's become, resulting in trying to switch with her counterpart to be a military maverick again.

How well does it match the trope?

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Main / TheNeidermeyer

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