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[[File:GeneralPatton.jpg|frame|link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Patton|[[Truth in Television]].]]
{{quote|''"There's [[There Are Two Kinds of People in the World|two kinds of generals]] in the service. Some are dumber than a box of inbred chickens and get their job through political connections, and not actual battlefield skills. I'm the other kind. Learn the difference."''
|'''General Lumberdon''', ''[[Antihero for Hire]]'' [http://www.antiheroforhire.com/d/20090406.html 2009-04-06]}}
{{quote|'''Soldier:''' "Where ya goin', General?"
'''Patton:''' "Berlin. I'm going to personally shoot [[Adolf Hitler|that paper-hangin' sonofabitch]]!"
|''[[Patton]]''}}
The '''Four-Star Badass''' is a badass
The [[Colonel Badass]] page explains that a Colonel is usually more [[Badass]] than a General because although a General has the higher rank (and may even be a certifiable [[Badass]] himself) they're usually relegated to desk duty and administrative tasks. This is also the reason why [[The Captain]] will always be the star of the show even if they don't have the same clout as a Commodore or Admiral.
However, some fiction writers don't subscribe to this notion. They believe that [[Asskicking Equals Authority|in order to have reached a four-star rank you had to have done some
The important characteristic of Four-Star Badass is the
This happens in a number of ways:
* '''The Four-Star Badass is the star'''
* '''[[Awesome Moment of Crowning]], Business As Usual'''
▲'''The Four-Star Badass is the star''' - [[The Hero]] of the story also happens to be a General or Admiral, ensuring that they have to get involved in the story's conflicts and adventures.
* '''The [[Future Badass]] route'''
* '''Ten
▲'''[[Awesome Moment of Crowning]], Business As Usual''' - [[The Captain]] or [[Colonel Badass]] gets promoted. But they're [[The Hero]] so they continue to be badass.
* '''[[Da Chief]] To The Rescue'''
▲'''The [[Future Badass]] route''' - If its a [[Speculative Fiction]] series, we may get an episode glimpse in which a protagonist, usually [[The Captain]], is promoted, probably [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]].
▲'''Ten Minute Promotion''' - They're promoted for a moment, but events (or themselves) conspire to demote them right back into a position where they're back in the field.
▲'''[[Da Chief]] To The Rescue''' - The [[Cowboy Cop]] or [[Military Maverick]] has gotten themselves in a ''real'' jam. [[Da Chief]] takes it upon themselves to personally get involved in order to rescue their subordinate. They might say something like ''"Sure X is a loose cannon, but dammit, they're MY loose cannon and I'm gonna get them."''
Many examples of this trope will probably turn out to be [[Badass Grandpa|Badass Grandpas and Grandmas]], and sometimes [[Cool Old Guy]]s and [[Cool Old Lady|Cool Old Ladies]]. Often a contemporary of the [[Old Soldier]].
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Contrast [[General Ripper]]<ref>Though sometimes this guy may be badass enough to qualify, especially if his obsession came from leading the fight from the front and snapped after seeing the Enemy's atrocities firsthand.</ref> and [[General Failure]]. May have a [[Chest of Medals]].
Despite the fact that this is named "Four-''Star'' Badass", examples do not need to be confined to the US military. "Four-Maple-Leaf Badass", "Sword-and-Starburst Badass", and "Five-Bar Badass" don't have the same ring to it.
{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'''s Major General Olivier Mira Armstrong, who once single-handedly took on the superhuman [[Our Homunculi Are Different|Sloth]] armed only with a broad sword.
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* Admiral [[Honor Harrington]]. Actually a fair number of Admirals in the Honorverse.
**In the Honorverse someone has to command fleets at the sharp point even if the bureaucracy is way back at [[Mission Control]]. It is not just an affectation that there is no room for "chateau generalship" in the Royal Manticoran Navy.
***That is truth in television too.
***At the same time generals have when they could gotten close to the front lines often because they were subalterns in WWI and did not remember chateau generalship fondly. Coincidently, chateau generalship was as much because of the circumstance of WWI on the Western Front which was one big siege.
** Henke, a friend of Harrington's is a badass on her own and she shows up in some of the later series.
** Haven has several. They did after all survive Manticore.
** Solarians with few exceptions are extremely bereft in the badassery department. That is because they have not fought a war for ages and are really mainly good at bureaucratic infighting. That would be the case if the Solarians were a more-or-less honestly run service and given how big a pork-barrel a military-industrial complex can be without the encouragement [[HAD to Be Sharp|of an outside enemy]] (not to mention governments that value bootlicking more then efficiency), honesty is something you grade on a curve anyway. But the Solarian armed forces are not subject just to ordinary peacetime rot but like everything else in their government tend to be suborned by outright criminals. Moreover their technology and tactics are way behind the times, almost as much as the Chinese in the Opium war. However, so far Solarian admirals have not displayed cowardice at least. That just got their people killed in greater numbers. In other words the Solarian admirals are not badasses, they are targets.
* Patrick McLanahan from the books of [[Dale Brown]]. Various other characters get promoted to stars without much loss in badassery too. To be honest, though, while he is still a good bomber crew member and [[Powered Armor|Tin Man]] user if needs must, he now spends more time as [[Mission Control]] and fighting off politicians or other generals so that the lower ranks can do their job.
* ''[[Discworld]]'''s Sam Vimes, Commander of the City Watch and one of the wealthiest if not the wealthiest man in the city (by marriage) by the end of ''[[
* General Serpilin from Konstantin Simonov's WWII epic ''The Living and The Dead'', especially in the first book, when his troops escape being surrounded by Nazis.
* While the command structure in ''[[Starship Troopers (novel)|Starship Troopers]]'' can be defined as [[Authority Equals Asskicking]], the Sky Marshals take the cake. In order to get that promotion, one needs to go through the command structures of both the Navy and the Mobile Infantry, starting from the bottom. Also note that the Sky Marshal leads from the front. In the book, the Sky Marshal who planned the disastrous Battle of Klendathu died on Klendathu. In the movie, it just had them resign, being a REMF (Rear Echelon Mother Fucker).
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* General Stockwell of the 5th season of ''[[The A-Team]]'' is shown to be a excellent marksman and hand-to-hand combatant as well as fluent in Chinese and always two steps ahead of everyone else. Of course, he ''is'' played by [[The Man from U.N.C.L.E.|Robert Vaughn]]...
* Several characters are this in ''[[Game of Thrones]]''.
* [[The Winds of War and War and Remembrance|The Winds of War/War and Remembrance]] miniseries naturally shows a number of four star badasses. Victor Henry, the hero, ends up as one at the end when the war is over making him a four star retired badass. Von Roon who is an [[Insufferable Genius]] in the book, is an [[Only Sane Man]] in Hitler's court and takes the time to personally visit the front (and see the appalling sight of German soldiers trickling towards the rear). There are also [[Historical Domain Character|Historical Domain Characters]] like Patton, Rommel, Halsey, Spruance, and others.
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
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==
* From ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'':
** Captain Kaff Tagon and his father, General Karl Tagon. The former has his own mercenary company, which has played a pivotal role in almost every modern (for the comic) conflict. The latter is retired, pushing 70, and still remains in fighting condition, even when reduced to a head in a jar.
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* [[Magnificent Bastard|General Tarquin]] from ''[[The Order of the Stick]]'' - when he first arrived on the Western Continent, he conquered eleven different nations over the course of eight months, and was only deposed through the combined efforts of ''twenty-six'' others. And if [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0851.html this page] is anything to go by, he's still got it even in his later years.
* The Jager Generals in ''[[Girl Genius]]'' each qualify. And there are currently seven. An "average" Jägermonster is a [[Super Soldier]] who [[Blood Knight|likes to fight]] enough to subscribe for indefinite military service despite knowing that the transformation is more likely to kill him immediately instead, is not just confident, but showy about it, and was good enough [[Old Soldier|to actually survive for]] ''centuries'' like this. Generals apparently are not only "schmott vuns" who "knows pipple" (they do), but stood out far enough for long enough in this company.
* ''[[Antihero for Hire]]'' has General Lumberdon. He talks funny, so [https://web.archive.org/web/20140801205147/http://antihero.keenspot.com/d/20090406.html time] and [https://web.archive.org/web/20140627101444/http://antihero.keenspot.com/d/20140609.html again] it comes up as a "sorrowful news" that even when not quite on top of the situation, he still knows better than to buy anyone's bullshit and can sort things out personally if needed.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]▼
[[Category:Authority Tropes]]
[[Category:Meaningful Titles]]
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[[Category:Military and Warfare Tropes]]
[[Category:Badass]]
[[Category:Badass in Charge]]
▲[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
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