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Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Difference between revisions
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== [[Real Life]] ==
* While they are often portrayed this way in fiction, Italian Fascists were neither ineffectual nor sympathetic. Just ask any of the people who tried to oppose Mussolini and his politics before [[World War II]]. Dissidents were often beaten within an inch of their lives, force-fed castor oil, and sent into exile on deserted islands. It's just that that's kid stuff compared to the [[Those Wacky Nazis|other forces of evil]] we were fighting against
** They just barely managed to conquer a tribal African country that had 19th
*** That doesn't change the fact that they were a danger to Italian opponents of their regime. Regardless of how (un)successful they were at fighting other countries, [[Hitler Ate Sugar|being an inspiration to Hitler]] and siding with him during the second World War hardly makes Italian Fascists sympathetic (at least, up until the point at which the Allies invaded Italy, and the Italian soldiers stood at the sidelines, watching their country being torn apart by fights that they no longer participated in; but before that, they were just ineffectual, not sympathetic).
*** "''Good soldiers, bad officers''" is how Rommel described the Italians, and as for how ineffectual they were, one of his other quotes was "''The German soldier has impressed the world, however the Italian Bersagliere soldier has impressed the German soldier''".
**** Of course, seeing that an army's capacity to organize, plan, and cause its various elements to cooperate efficiently is more important than individual competance, it's still not the makings of a very good military, as Italy's entire post Roman military history shows.
* ''Any'' crooks profiled on ''[
* The bank robber who was caught when he got ''trapped in'' the bank he was robbing... when he didn't try to pull the door open, and only pushed it. He was in there for about five minutes before the cops showed up.
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20091230053507/http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/hostage-post-office-gunman-was-angry-at-government-146816.html Warren Taylor] seems to have found a way to combine this trope with [[Terrorists Without a Cause]]. He stormed into a small-town post office, placed what appeared to be a bomb on the counter, and took three people hostage. At that point, he didn't seem to know quite what to do. Over the following eight hours, he issued two demands: a pizza to share with his hostages, and a pack of cigarettes for a hostage who smoked. In the end, he made his way outside and surrendered peacefully, eventually apologizing during his arraignment for getting everybody out on Christmas.
* [[wikipedia:Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf|Muhammad Saeed al-Sahaf]], better known as Baghdad Bob and Comical Ali (the latter being a reference to "Chemical Ali", the nickname of the much more effectively evil former Iraqi Defence Minister Ali Hassan al-Majid) gained fame and memetic status during the second Iraq War on account of his hilarious [[Blatant Lies]] about American forces, which were generally contradicted by things visible directly behind him.
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