A Million Is a Statistic: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"Strange, I think to myself, how we have seen so much death in the wars and we know that two million of us have fallen in vain - how come we are so stirred up by this one man and have almost forgotten those two million? But that's just how it is, because one man is always the dead - and two million is always just a statistic."''
|'''[[All Quiet on the Western Front|Erich Maria Remarque]]''', ''The Black Obelisk''; [[Beam Me Up, Scotty|attributed to]] [[Josef Stalin]]}}
The amount of [[Rule of Empathy|sympathy]] that death, cruelty or suffering is expected to evoke from the audience is often inversely proportional to the magnitude of its effects. Far more important is the degree to which the audience knows the character(s) affected.
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Part of this is that the [[Death Is Dramatic|major deaths occur on stage or on camera, in detail and taking long enough to be dramatic.]]
Psychologically, [[Rule of Empathy|proximity is more important than magnitude]]. Often ties into [[Offstage Villainy]], since the larger atrocities can't be displayed onscreen in full magnitude. Writers who want to avert this effect must deploy such tricks as the [[Empathy Doll Shot]], [[The Dead Have Names]], or personalizing some victims, to suggest the faces of the [[Faceless Mooks|faceless victims.]] Since [[Men Are the Expendable Gender]], this sort of [[A Death in the Limelight]] is more often [[Wouldn't Hit a Girl|female]] or [[Children Are Innocent|children]] (especially [[Heartwarming Orphan|orphans]]) or, if male, [[Kick Them While They Are Down|injured]]. [[Watching Troy Burn|Strong reactions by main characters can also help.]]
The concept of this is related to the theoretical Dunbar's Number, which says at some point, it is simply impossible for a person to truly care about so many people. This is further explored and explained in ''[[Cracked.com]]'''s article "[http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere_p1.html What is the monkeysphere?]"
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[[Truth in Television]], alas. Has even been reproduced in a lab, [http://www.badscience.net/2010/10/empathys-failures/ where increasing the number of a criminal's victims causes people to recommend a lower sentence.]
{{noreallife|
{{
{{examples}}
== Media in General ==
* Almost any [[Space Opera]] in any Media. ''Very'' difficult to avoid when you have a population that far exceeds our current one.
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** Xavin actually comments that it's a stupid way of viewing things. Pointing out, very logically, that if person dying is tragic, a million people dying must be a million times as tragic.
* In DC's ''[[Crisis on Infinite Earths]]'', individual characters are acknowledged according to popularity (with the Flash and Supergirl getting covers and lengthy eulogies). The entire ''universes'' destroyed by the Anti-Monitor (in infinite numbers if the title is taken literally, and several universes, some established and some new, are destroyed on-panel) pack far less emotional punch. (The destruction of Earth-3 is notable for the innumerable innocents counting for less than the handful of ''villains'' who go down trying to save it.)
* [[Captain America (comics)|Captain America]] had a story in which the villain was planning to unleash a weaponised virus to kill millions in revenge for his murdered wife. When the horrified Cap points out the hypocrisy, the villain callously responds with this trope's title.
* Who is responsible for the worst act of genocide in modern history? In the [[Marvel Universe]], it's Cassandra Nova. The Sentinel Massacre, which she orchestrated, was responsible for the deaths of more than 16 million mutants, roughly. (The casualty count was anywhere from 16.5 million to 17.4 million, depending on who was recording, and it is not even known if these figures include the citizens of Genosia, which was completely destroyed.) At any rate, this act of genocide rivals even that of [[The Holocaust]], making such casual disregard for life by mutant-haters rather... ''horrific''.
== Fan Works ==
* Played creepily straight in ''[[Conquest]]'', where most of the reaction we see from the Borg during their war with the Empire is the statistics of their casualties. By the time the casualties come to 12 trillion drones, tens of thousands of ships, and over seven hundred worlds, the Collective starts to realize something must be off...▼
▲* Played creepily straight in [[Conquest]], where most of the reaction we see from the Borg during their war with the Empire is the statistics of their casualties. By the time the casualties come to 12 trillion drones, tens of thousands of ships, and over seven hundred worlds, the Collective starts to realize something must be off...
== Film ==
* ''[[Austin Powers]]'' has related scenes (which were, for some reason, deleted from the American version) for two mook deaths (Mutated Sea Bass decapitation and the steamroller). Both show that the person who just died for your laughs had a life, friends, family, [[You Bastard|all of which have been grievously affected by their death]].
* On a ''[[Star Wars]]'' note, this has been a
** Also when Leia comforts Luke over Obi-Wan's death, despite Leia having recently seen her entire planet destroyed. Well, we didn't know anyone else from Alderaan.
*** [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] ''brilliantly'' by ''[[Robot Chicken]]'', who not only has Leia call Luke on it, but also lampshades the fact that Luke had ''just'' met Obi-Wan. Although
** Well, Tarkin pulled the trigger. And Luke killed almost two million people when he exploded the Death Star when he was still nineteen. During his life, Luke killed way more people. And, let's face it, Jacen's atrocities are much worse than just killing Mara Jade.
** The rest of the galaxy, Leia in particular, will admit that Vader's [[Heroic Sacrifice]] was good of him, but also insist that [[Easily Forgiven|it really doesn't make up for all the rest]]. Fleeting mentions of the Dark Lord in the [[X Wing Series]], by which point he has been dead for years, all associate the name with the worst kind of evil (to a point where even 150 years after his death and the Vong Invasion, Vader is ''still'' seen as one of the worst monsters in history).
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** Leia may have maintained that sense of perspective throughout her life, but she didn't get it from her mother or anybody in her mother's era. Amidala is not shocked when Anakin confesses to her he has just massacred an entire Tusken tribe, but when he confesses to [[What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous?|killing Mace Windu]] (who was just about to strike down an unarmed, drained opponent in anger) and [[Kick the Dog|a handful of children on her side]], she tells him, [[And That's Terrible|"You've changed."]]
*** Possibly a case of [[Fantastic Racism]]
**** Also a case of being more able to understand Anakin's killing the entire tribe of raiders that had just tortured his mother to death than she could understand betraying and murdering his fellow Jedi. The former is a case of retribution being taken too far, but is still rooted in emotions that are clearly ''Anakin''. The latter is a flat-out break from everything Anakin used to believe in and fight for.
** From a film making perspective; more screen time is dedicated to the death of a single Ewok in ''[[Return of the Jedi]]'' than the destruction of Alderaan in ''[[A New Hope]]''.
* Sort of lampshaded in [[Charlie Chaplin]]'s ''Monseiur Verdoux'': "One murder makes a villain, millions a hero. Numbers sanctify, my good fellow."
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** Though Gaunt himself averts this rather pointedly; he takes time to memorize the names, faces and details of every man he's fought with or who's died under his command, and can recite them from memory. He gets quite visibly upset when it turns out there's someone he has forgotten.
** Also, Hark finds {{spoiler|Soric}} in the midst of many tortured psykers, and kills him and no others. (Admittedly, he's the one who [[I Cannot Self-Terminate|asked for it]].)
** In the background, the whole [[Darker and Edgier|GRIMDARK]] milieu for ''[[Warhammer
** The incident that finally caused the Emperor to finally realize that Horus was beyond redemption was when he saw Horus flay a guardsman/Space Marine/Adeptus Custodes during their climactic battle. Instead of the countless billions he was already responsible for, including his own Primarch children.
*** Presumably, the later [[Retcon]] to make that Guardsman be a Space Marine and then later again be an Adeptus Custodes was to emphasize how much of the ridiculous power of Chaos Horus was given - meaning the reason for the Emperor's realization wasn't exactly because of how he killed someone in front of him without lifting a finger, it was because he killed someone of superhuman strength without lifting a finger.
*** The reason for the Emperor's realization is still stated to be him realizing that Horus was irredeemably evil. Before that point he had been hoping he could reason with Horus and make peace, but seeing him personally kill another human being without a thought made the Emperor understand that he couldn't reason with him.
*** This is also the reason why most like the Guardsman ideal better. Ollanius Pius was just a normal gaurdsman so have NO WAY at even hurting Horus at all.
* In [[Graham McNeill]]'s ''[[Warhammer
* Discussed in [[Neil Gaiman]]'s ''[[American Gods]]''.
{{quote|Without individuals we see only numbers: a thousand dead, a hundred thousand dead, "casualties may rise to a million." With individual stories, the statistics become people — but even that is a lie, for the people continue to suffer in numbers that themselves are numbing and meaningless. Look, see the child’s swollen, swollen belly, and the flies that crawl at the corners of his eyes, his skeletal limbs: will it make it easier for you to know his name, his age, his dreams, his fears? To see him from the inside? And if it does, are we not doing a disservice to his sister, who lies in the searing dust beside him, a distorted, distended caricature of a human child? And there, if we feel for them, are they now more important to us than a thousand other children touched by the same famine, a thousand other young lives who will soon be food for the flies’ own myriad squirming children?
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** In ''Genesis Of The Daleks'' the Kaled city is destroyed, killing at least thousands of people. The Doctor is deeply saddened... because he thinks that Harry and Sarah were in the city (naturally they escaped in time). However, it's averted to a degree as the destruction of the city still has emotional impact, mostly from the eerily jubilant reaction of the [[Designated Heroes|Thals]].
* ''[[Torchwood]]: Children of Earth'' is all about this trope.
* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in ''[[Star Trek: The
* In ''[[Star Trek: The
{{quote|'''Kevin Uxbridge''': "I saw her broken body... I went insane. My hatred exploded. And in an instant of grief... I destroyed the Husnock! ...No, no, no, no, you don't understand the scope of my crime. I didn't kill just one Husnock, or a hundred, or a thousand. I killed them all. All Husnock, everywhere."
'''Captain Picard''': "We are not qualified to be your judges. We have no law to fit your crime. You're free to return to the planet, and to make Rishon live again. ...We leave behind a being of extraordinary power... and conscience. I am not certain if he should be praised or condemned. Only that he should be left alone." }}
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***** Clarification: The Federation was int he middle of a losing war with the species which killed the colonists and the god beings wife. He didn't just kill all living members of that species, he removed them from TIME. Which is why none of the main characters remember the species in question and they don't have any information on the ship in their databases. So while the Federation doubtlessly has laws against genocide, there probably aren't any laws which deal with removing the existence of an entire species from time. Which is odd considering the amount of time travel in the Star Trek Universe. This does however, leave a major plot hole in that if that species never existed why is the colony still a smoking wasteland?
****** Time paradox. If the being alters reality so that his wife never died, then he never goes on his rampage, therefore he doesn't alter reality, therefore... etc, etc, etc. Apparently he cannot retcon his own personal life-line, so things that intimately effect that remain unchanged even if the rest of the universe alters to fit.
* In the final arc of ''[[Star Trek:
* Averted on ''[[Star Trek:
** Tucker's younger sister was killed in the attack and he spends time trying to avert this trope by insisting that she was no more important than any of the other casualties. Numerous characters try telling him that it is okay to acknowledge that she was more important to him, and that it is also okay to be more upset over her death. Finally after a costly battle, he breaks down and admits how much he misses her.
* Many ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' fans lost all respect for Spike after his {{spoiler|[[Attempted Rape]] of Buffy}}. They were perfectly okay with him killing thousands in horrible ways as a soulless vampire because it happened mostly offscreen. And not just killing - "Do you know what I've done to girls Dawn's age?"
* The Cylon attack which claimed billions of lives in ''[[Battlestar Galactica
** To be fair, that single woman with cancer ''is'' {{spoiler|the President.}}
* A terrible example of this occurs in ''[[Stargate SG-1]]''. In order to save Teal'c's life, the main characters destroy a piece of technology that is stopping a Goa'uld invasion! (said invasion was not imminent or known about however - the defence was in place and so Goa'uld did not send troops there. Unfortunately one must have decided to send a scout at some point after the tech was destroyed). When the Goa'uld do invade in the second season, they destroy half of the planet's population. This is made worse by noting that the defense technology they disabled could probably have been circumvented by the humans. When some of the [[Designated Villain|Designated Antagonists]] began pointing out SG-1's faults, I seriously began to believe them.
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[[The Fifties|Nearly three billion]] hunks of well-done steak! }}
* Played straighter in "People Say" by Portugal. The Man:
{{quote|''[[Sarcasm Mode|What a lovely day,]] yeah, we won the war''
''May have lost a million men, but we've got a million more''
''All the people, they say...'' }}
* Sara Groves has a song called "Abstraction" which is essentially about this trope. Millions of starving people in a place like Africa... hard to sympathize. Meet a few of them, and they're no longer just a statistic.
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== Newspapers ==
* The reason the news reports massive catastrophes abroad is to mention that none of "our people" were hurt.
** Finnish satirist news blog ''Lehti'' ran an article titled "[https://web.archive.org/web/20090124183911/http://lehti.samizdat.info/2004/07/24/319/ A Finn Equals 4 Alligators]", also giving the "official" numbers of tragedy in news. Ten thousand Africans equal 1,000 Asians or other non-whites, equal 100 non-nearby whites, equals 10 nearby whites, which equals four alligators, equals one Finnish person "if you know them". They also ran an article assuring that there were "No Finnish Casualties Among the Dead Pope".
* A similar rule applied to some British newspapers: "One Brit equals 10 Frogs (Frenchmen) equals 100 wogs (Mediterranean Europeans)".
** A different version of that is, "One dead in Putney equals 10 dead in Paris equals 100 dead in Turkey equals 1,000 dead in India equals 10,000 dead in China."
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== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[Warhammer
** Imperial Guard Commander Chenkov of the Valhallan 18th is mentioned as sacrificing ''10 million'' Guardsmen without using artillery or armored support in a single conflict in order to end a year long siege. He did get a nice merit for it though.
*** Chenkov also built a wall out of the bodies of his men. Not the ones that died in conflict. When he wanted a wall he just ordered them to be executed!
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* ''[[Risk]]''. Granted, you're just rolling dice and moving pieces of plastic around. You never stop to consider how many Green soldiers you would be sending to their deaths just to seize Kamchatka from the Blue Army. Not to mention that the game really only ends when all but one of the armies has been annihilated.
* In ''[[Rifts]]'', the Great Cataclysm which brought Rifts Earth to its [[After the End|current state]], and the random Rifts demons, and other catastrophes that came after nearly made humanity [[Apocalypse How|extinct]]. This is brought up many times in various sourcebooks, but the numbers are so huge they're hard for someone reading the books to imagine.
* In any ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'' campaign that features the Outer Planes (such as ''[[Planescape]]'') it is common knowledge that even a ''small'' battle in the Blood War is at least a hundred times bigger than any fought among mortals, and casualties can often amount to millions on both sides. This becomes even remarkable when you consider that neither side has made any progress towards winning the conflict since it started eons ago. While it's hard to feel sorry for fiends, the thought of incredible loss of life that the war causes can often make one pause.
** One official ''Planescape'' adventure takes the players to a place called the Field of Nettles which is a frequent battlefield in the Blood War. The place doesn't have landscape, it has gargantuan piles of...corpses that never rot for some unknown reason. The piles are so grand they make large hills or small mountains, and there are so many that the Field has become a maze, nigh-impossible to navigate without flying support. Whole armies can be outfitted just from scavenging the piles, and one magical device installed there is actually building structures out of bones for use in the next skirmish that occurs there. Even the adventure can only barely reflect on the sheer death toll of mortal and immortal lives that goes into making the place, and is more concerned with the logistics of crossing it while worrying about fiendish patrols.
*** But the worst of the worst occurs if the players are successful in completing the objective of this mission - finding the battle plans of the infernal armies of Hell - and then read them. {{spoiler|If so, they discover that the Field of Nettles was ''not'' considered to have any strategic importance at the time, and was actually used as a distraction to lure the demons from another battlefield that they ''really'' considered important. In other words, the devils were willing to sacrifice millions of soldiers for nothing more than ''[[We Need a Distraction|a diversionary feint]].''. After all they've seen up to then, the revelation should hit the players very hard.}}
== Video Games ==
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** [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] by Pelleas in ''[[Fire Emblem Tellius|Radiant Dawn]]'': "Individual lives taken before your eyes weigh more heavily than the many lives taken during the chaos of war. If that life is someone dear, the burden is even worse."
* On the other end... ''Defcon''. "MEXICO CITY HIT, 12.2M DEAD".
** More than that, there's no way to play ''[[DEFCON]]'' without ''millions'' of civilians dying. [[
*** As long as you meet your [[Dr. Strangelove|world targets in megadeaths]]...
*** It is indeed possible to have zero casualties on your side in Defcon, and if you never launch any nukes at enemy cities...
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* In a subversion, if you destroy [[Video Game/Levels/Awesome|Cradle 03]] in ''[[Armored Core|Armored Core For Answer]]'', the [[Mission Control|other]] [[Big Bad|characters]] [[The Dragon|WILL]] [[Face Heel Turn|care about]] [[Video Game Cruelty Potential|your mass]] [[Complete Monster|slaughter]]. And then you get the [[Scrappy Level]] as [[Video Game Cruelty Punishment]].
** Of course, no one seems to care about the countless lives you take when you destroy Arms Forts, like Spirit of Motherwill, or the countless Line Ark citizens who die because you blew up the Megalis power plant, that provides energy for their Phlebotium-Clearing Air Purifiers....
* ''[[Valkyria Chronicles]]'' has {{spoiler|Isara's}} death being a major blow to all the main characters, who mope about it until the end of the game. On the other hand, [[Player
** The point is moot. [[No True Scotsman|A REAL Valkyria Chronicles player]] would never allow one of their soldiers to perish, no matter how many times they may need to repeat the level in order to complete it without casualties.
** This is only the beginning. ''The entire Gallian army'' gets vaporized at one point, and ''no one'' has anything to say about the thousands of lives that were just snuffed out; the main characters' primary reaction is, "Holy shit, what a huge explosion-- can Alicia do that!?"
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== Web Original ==
* [http://forums.spacebattles.com/showpost.php?p=4458484&postcount=144 Here.]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20120509141137/http://superdickery.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=28&Itemid=45&limitstart=136 This] entry on ''Superdickery''.
{{quote|Granted, destroying the entire world would be the single greatest act of dickery he's performed yet, but somehow the slaughter of six billion anonymous people seems to lack that personal touch we get when he kills Lois or ruins Jimmy's life.}}
* In the final battle in [[Greek Ninja]], several people (and not) lost their lives but only {{spoiler|Iphigenie's}} death is mentioned.
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[[Category:Double Standard]]
[[Category:Emotion Tropes]]
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
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