Unclear Description: Obligatory War Crime Scene

Note: This thread was proposed by ~Azorius 24, who gave permission for others to make the thread, so paging them here.

Obligatory War Crime Scene appears to be a victim of Trope Decay - in the (Wayback Machine archived) original trope page, it was pretty straightforwardly "the heroes or their allies commit war crimes to avert Black-and-White Morality in a war story". Since the potential for villainous examples has been added to the description, it seems to have turned into "People Commit War Crimes", occasionally just used as a Pot Hole reference to the subject in general. The trope is also burdened by an unhelpful laconic that, for some reason, suggests that both sides need to be committing war crimes for the trope to count.

• 15/50 examples (30%) Involved a villain committing a war crime.
• 11/50 examples (22%) Were the original usage- protagonists or their allies commit a war crime, establishing ambiguous morality.
• 8/50 examples (16%) Were a reference to war crimes in general and/or historical events that did not seem to have much bearing on the protagonists' morality.
• 7/50 examples (14%) Involved protagonists or their allies committing a war crime, however in these cases the perpetrator was consistently portrayed as a ruthless Anti-Hero, or worse, and their acts serve to emphasise this.
• 4/50 examples (8%) Involve a description of both the protagonists and antagonists committing war crimes.
• Another 4/50 examples (8%) Were ZCE or other misuse.
• 1/50 examples (2%) Involved a mention of a war crime that stood in stark contrast to the rest of the work and hence appeared out of place.

• Revert the trope to its original description, remove examples that are villainous (possibly move to Kick the Dog/ Rape, Pillage, and Burn / whatever's appropriate) or general references.
• Since there's such a wide spread of examples, axe the trope, check examples to see if they can be added as War Is Hell / Kick the Dog / Moral Myopia.
• Create new trope(s) to cover the expanded definition.
• Keep the expanded definition, but find some way to avoid it becoming People Sit on Chairs.

Revert to original description and move no-longer-appropriate examples to more fitting tropes, is my opinion at least.

I'm in favor of going back to the original definition, which would include fixing the Laconic, and we could move misuse to other tropes if they fit.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 15th 2022 at 12:01:08 PM

Restrict it back to "during a war, The Hero's allies are shown committing war crimes". Though I wonder if it's not too similar to Graying Morality.

Thanks for putting this up.

That's my preferred solution as well, should it count if The Hero themselves commits a war crime or restricted only to others on their side?

Re the Greying Morality comparison, that would depend on whether or not the trope can occur within works which were Grey-and-Grey Morality or Black-and-Grey Morality to begin with, such as many of the 'anti-hero' examples.

Edited by Azorius24 on Mar 15th 2022 at 5:24:43 PM

Hmm, I could see this as a specific event that causes Graying Morality that can be kept as a separate trope, if the original definition is enforced.

Note that the villainous variant was unilaterally added to the description only in July 2021. I believe there was misuse even before that which I attribute to the too-broad trope name.

I would agree a rename would help. A potential idea I had was All's Fair In War?

Edited by Azorius24 on Mar 15th 2022 at 5:41:33 PM

So I think revert the description to before then, clean up "bad guys do bad stuff", and consider renaming.

If we are revising the definition, do we expect "Obligatory" to fit? In other words, would the hero's side have White morality without the war crime?

The original description does seem to imply that, but I have a feeling that this will result in the majority of examples having to be cut.

I agree with reverting the description + renaming to make it more clearly about the hero's side doing it. No Heroes In War? War Turns All Into Villains? War Crime Subverts Heroism?

Revert + rename

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Mar 15th 2022 at 2:33:46 PM

Yeah, based on what was said about the description being unilaterally changed a year ago and the misuse predating that, I'm in favor of renaming in addition to reverting the definition changes. Maybe Heroic War Criminals would work in addition to what was previously suggested, since it would indicate that the troops committing the war crimes are otherwise heroic.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 15th 2022 at 1:45:08 PM

I like No Heroes In War best.

It's punchy, but it also sounds like a defiance of War Is Glorious.

Yeah, I'd rather worry about the title when we fully know how the trope will be defined.

I do still believe that villainous war crime examples should be kept around, possibly as a separate trope. It's a bit too specific of a niche imho to just be placed under the umbrella of Kick the Dog, a pretty broad trope itself.

That said, I can agree that the original should probably be reverted to be about the heroes instead of the villains, provided that a separate trope covering the similar actions of villains is also made to compensate.

Edited by Rmpdc on Mar 15th 2022 at 6:58:18 PM

I think there needs to be a bit of clarifiation with the use of the trope. Does this include Fridge Logic or just explicit depictions of the good guys engaging in bad behavior? For example, if a film depicts the good guys waterboarding a prisoner of war to get information out of them, but portrays it as morally just due to the extenuating circumstances, would that count? Clearly a war crime is happening, but if it's never treated like a war crime in-universe should it count?

I personally think not.

There's an example of that in Community where Jeff takes some pills and hallucinates he's in the world of G.I. Joe. During a fight scene he kills Destro after he parachutes out of a plane. Jeff is court-martialed for killing an enemy. Now narratively, this is treated as an example of how childish the cartoon world is and Jeff is framed as a Combat Pragmatist. However, in the real world, shooting someone who parachutes out of a plane is considered a war crime.

^but the thing is, if the point of the trope is to show Graying Morality or Grey-and-Gray Morality like others have noted (and I personally agree with that reading), I think the scene has to be portrayed as, at best, morally dubious, if not outright wrong.

Parodies are fine if the point of the absurdity is to criticize or critique. I haven't seen the show enough to know which one that example should be

The only work that really comes to mind for me is Spec Ops: The Line, where the protagonist undergoes severe Sanity Slippage and eventually attacks innocent civilians with white phosphorous. And it's Played for Horror.

Edited by WarJay77 on Mar 15th 2022 at 11:06:44 AM

Right, my point was to show an example of a work where a character commits a war crime, but narratively it isn't treated as a war crime.

Edit: Another example would be the trope of I Surrender, Suckers. In real life, such a move is considered a war crime. But in fiction it's rarely treated as such.

Edited by RustBeard on Mar 15th 2022 at 8:29:31 AM

That's a good point. We can do that.

oh got it. Yeah, I don't have a specific example, but the reason that came to mind was things like 24. It's not about war so its a bit different but the main character Jack Bauer used a lot of "enhanced interrogation techniques" that didn't get criticized in-universe until seasons later, (the show coinciding both with the "War on Terror" fervor and the widespread criticism of it as what happened at Guantanamo became public knowledge) spawning Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique, i.e. heroic depictions of torture. That stuff is what I'm thinking about and honestly, any work with enough jingoism fueling it can run the risk of this, imo.

Edited by amathieu13 on Mar 16th 2022 at 7:50:20 AM