Basic Trope: An army is given Training from Hell in order to become a Badass Army.
- Straight: The army is trained using grueling and somewhat dangerous methods because that way they'll mop the floor with less-trained soldiers.
- Exaggerated: The training is so difficult that only an incredibly small percentage even survive it, much less go on to be part of the army.
- Downplayed: It's definitely hard work, being in the army, but not so hard that the average person couldn't survive.
- Justified:
- This training is for a special elite unit- the ones who take on the incredibly hard missions. They need hard training in order to survive in the field.
- The threat to the home civilization is so dire that gentler training methods cannot yield adequately-prepared soldiers in a timely fashion.
- Inverted: The training of the army is something amazingly easy, such as walking three meters.
- Subverted: The army is given Training from Hell to utterly trash their opponents... but before they can put it to use, the war ends.
- Double Subverted:...but come the next war, they're ready, and they easily defeat their opponent.
- Parodied: The trainer is a real spartan back from the dead.
- Zig Zagged: After winning the war, they're confident enough to take on a larger country... that beats them due to better tactics, reserves, and supplies.
- Averted: The generals consider using Training from Hell on their army, but decide against it.
- Enforced: "We need to show how this army got to be so badass. Training from Hell would be a good way to do it."
- Lampshaded: "The army's motto might well be 'you don't get to be this badass without going through a lot of pain for it.'"
- Invoked: The higher-ups give orders for the army to be given Training from Hell to get results.
- Exploited: The country puts out propaganda based on how the Training from Hell makes their soldiers a Badass Army.
- Defied: The higher-ups give strict orders not to give the army Training from Hell.
- Discussed: "Evulz' army has annihilated everything it crossed without remorse or hesitation. The last five nations trained their soldiers through conventional methods; not one of them survived."
- Conversed: "This soldiers must be very stronger that a real human if they can survive this training; I actually don't understand how they have not won already"
- Deconstructed:
- Sure, the trainees that succeed are good, but there's too few of them. An enemy with less individual quality but more numbers could easily overrun them.
- Since so much effort is invested in training each individual soldier, they're too hard to replace.
- The training goes too far, and all that harshness simply weakens the people who survive it.
- The training goes too far that it gives them Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Then in actual combat they end up either killing the Drill Sergeant Nasty as revenge, or committing suicide.
- While a soldier through the extreme training might be better than one who hasn't it takes ten recruits. Even as minimally trained conscripts, those ten will win out through sheer numbers. Strategically, paying ten times the men for only twice the manpower is a terrible trade.
- Reconstructed:
- Even the training's washouts have gotten some good out of it, and they go on to reinforce the regular army.
- The people who have gone through the training help train the next generation.
- Revenge is an intentional part of the training — once they've gained the courage to kill their oppressive superiors, the enemy will be nothing to them, and they stave off stress with bloodthirsty anticipation of their deadly "graduation ceremony." The drill sergeants are all okay with this, viewing it as a noble sacrifice.
- Implied: The army is uniquely driven and brutal, and it doesn't seem like they're any more physically powerful.
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