Grey and Gray Morality: Difference between revisions

* In ''[[Air America]]'', there are definitely good guys and bad guys, but none of the good guys are pure white-hats, not even Billy Covington and Corinne Landreaux, who probably come closest, and none of the villains are pure black-hats, not even Major Lemond and General Soong. Yes, granted, Soong, Lemond, and Lemond's assistant Rob Diehl are drug runners, but there is no evidence that Lemond and Diehl are enriching themselves, and even Gene Ryack, who is more or less neutral for most of the film, points out that it is impossible to win a war in Southeast Asia without controlling the opiate trade, so Lemond and Diehl, and even Soong, are just doing what is necessary for the war effort. Ryack himself is a gun runner, and it is made clear that pretty much all the pilots are running illegal scams on the side. Corinne, again, might seem closest to being a pure white-hat, but she's dating Rob, one of the villains. Senator Davenport turns out to be a good guy at the end, but he's willing to look the other way at Gen. Soong's rather dodgy "recruitment" techniques. So all in all, no one in the film really seems all good or all evil.

* In the [[Transformers (film)|Transformers film series]], the, errr...heroic Autobots just want to end the tyranny of the Decepticons...by killing every last one of them without mercy. Meanwhile, the Decepticons think they're doing what's best for their own kind. The only major difference is that one side likes humans, while the other doesn't.

** French singer Jean-Jacques Goldman titled one of his songs "Entre gris clair et gris foncé" ("Between Light Gray and Dark Gray"). Specifically, its lyrics are about the increase of ambiguous morality in fiction.

{{quote|''[[Good Is Boring|Dulled good guys]], [[Evil Is Cool|troubling bad guys]]''

''Nor whites [[Light Is Not Good|wholly innocent]]'' }}

*** Even then, he's still somewhat sympathetic in a pathetic way. He ''literally'' can't be anything but The Supreme Dick in all of existence. This of course raises the question of whether anything in this setting (Or even [[Real Life]]) can be said to be pure evil if you can't choose to be it, but that raises philosophical questions beyond the scope of this Wiki, so let's just leave it at that.

** [[Planescape]]. Factions aren't explicitly good or evil, they just have different motivations and can commit a variety of acts.

** [[Mystara]] campaign ''Wrath of the Immortals'': the two principal factions of Immortals (D&D's functional equivalent of AD&D's gods), the Ring of Fire and the Fellowship of the Star, both have good reasons for what they do, and both pursue their objectives by morally questionable means. Rad and his followers in the Fellowship of the Star are just pursuing knowledge, and are studying a magical artifact, the Nucleus of the Spheres, that has incredible powers that are unique in the universe, and might possibly be used to make the world a much better place. The problem is that the Nucleus is draining the magical energy from the world, which would, among other things, exterminate every magical race, including elves, dragons, fairies, etc., meaning several counts of genocide. To say nothing of all the other people who would die as the civilizations, most notably Alphatia, that depend on magic would collapse. So Ixion and his followers in the Ring of Fire have sound reasons to want to destroy Rad and stop anyone from using the Nucleus of the Spheres. As things develop, however, the only way to destroy Rad is to kill all his mortal followers, meaning that Ixion and his allies have to provoke a war by Alphatia against Glantri, a war which drags in Thyatis and the Heldann Freeholds as well, and which ultimately spreads to many other countries, killing millions. But neither is side really wrong. The Brotherhood of Shadow, a third group of Entropic Immortals who are just trying to prolong and exacerbate the conflict are straightforwardly evil, except that their scheming is both pretty ineffective ''and'', even more importantly, enables the heroes to figure out the whole plot and save the world. So [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|the good Immortals unleash a war that kills millions of innocent people]], while [[Nice Job Fixing It, Villain|the evil Immortals are relatively ineffective at making things worse, inadvertently save the world]]. Go figure.

* In ''[[Samurai Warriors]]'', especially the second title, the focus is about the battle of Sekigahara. Those who side with Ishida Mitsunari will probably see him as a [[Jerkass]] who snarks a lot and is being redeemed with the values of friendship and honor; and see Tokugawa Ieyasu as a [[Fat Bastard]] who is stealing the throne of Japan while it rightfully belongs to Toyotomi Hideyori. However, those who sides with the Tokugawa know that Ieyasu is instead a 'Fat Gentleman', and he puts a lot of care to his fellow officers and people, condemning the West (especially Mitsunari's ally Kanetsugu) of using pretty words like 'honor and justice' to do underhanded things and robbing the freedom of the people. In fact, ''[[Samurai Warriors]]'' is much grayer than ''[[Dynasty Warriors]]'', the closest we can get of [[Obviously Evil]] is Fuuma Kotarou, and even he's ''still'' grayer than Dong Zhuo.

* ''[[Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater]]'' uses this as its main theme. Naked Snake is fighting in Soviet territory and nobody is really on the side they seem to be on. Betrayals, double-crossing etc. are rife. The Boss explains to Snake that there is no such thing as an absolute enemy. Wars simply happen because of circumstance as leaders and situations change: soldiers are just pawns to this. {{spoiler|Then of course Naked Snake becomes Big Boss and forms the La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo and eventually Outer Heaven. His support team, who seem kindly allies end up crooked, with the loquacious Dr. Clark performing sick experiments on Gray Fox and the tea-drinking Brit Major Zero becoming the mastermind of the La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo.}}

* Ditto for the ''[[Legacy of Kain]]'' series. By the time Defiance rolls around, you're never really sure who's supposed to be the good guy and who the bad guy.

** The Hylden have a single redeeming feature? Or are we just talking about freakish abominations not imprisoned in another universe?

*** Really, there is only one truly evil character in the whole series. Too bad that he's [[The Chessmaster]]...

* In ''[[Rift]]'', you've got the [[Knight Templar|oh-so-devout]] Guardians versus the [[Mad Scientist|innovative and self-reliant]] Defiants, [[The Usual Adversaries|trying to thwart each other at every turn]]. Both sides have skeletons in their closets, both sides are ostensibly trying to hold off [[The End of the World as We Know It]], and it's even difficult to point out either side as [[A Lighter Shade of Grey|the darker or lighter gray]].

* None of the three main factions in ''[[Sins of a Solar Empire]]'' can be considered truly good or bad. The Trade Emergency Coalition appear to be just [[Technical Pacifist]]s trying to fight off the "evil" Vasari and the vengeful Advent, but the reason the Advent are vengeful is because the traders exiled them from their homeworld 1000 years before for having different ideas about social norms. The Advent may have legitimate grievances against the traders, except the ones who actually exiled them died a long time ago, so they're trying to punish people who didn't do anything to them. The Vasari used to be a vast [[The Empire|empire]] and still follow similar policies in terms of enslavement and locking down colonies, but they're just the remains from a single colony that have been fleeing an unknown enemy that has destroyed the rest of the empire for tens of thousands of years and are conquering trader worlds only to get enough resources to be able to continue their flight.

** All three sides engage in a total war against their enemies, nuking planets from orbit until everyone is dead.

* In ''[[Avadon]]'', both {{spoiler|Redbeard}} and {{spoiler|the Duke}} have both positive and negative traits that can make it hard to decide who to side with.

* In ''[[Dark Souls]]'', the central conflict in the game is extremely lacking in details, but what details we do know ultimately make it an example of this.

* [[Word of God]] claims that this is the case in ''[[Drowtales]]'', where the story is shown through several viewpoint characters, neither being portrayed as good/evil and with fairly realistic motivations for their actions.

* In the very [[Not Safe for Work]] webcomic ''[[Felarya]]'', man - eating monsters are depicted as no worse than the humans they eat.

* The main conflict in [[Juathuur]] is between control and freedom. Both sides have their reasons, and their differences are mainly due to age gaps (as the 'control' side grew up in a world torn by war, and the 'freedom' side did not). See the comic page for details.

* The main characters of ''[[Narbonic]]'' are a mad scientist, her henchwoman who loves to destroy things, her henchman with a deep dark secret not even he knows, and a superintelligent gerbil whose efforts to do good often cause more havoc and chaos than some of the evil plans afoot.