Make the Bear Angry Again: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

{{quote|"The Red Bear has awoken. And the world will see his might."|''[[World in Conflict]]: [[Expansion Pack|Soviet Assault]]'' trailer}}

 

With [[The Great Politics Mess-Up]], Russia lost some of its villain status, so writers were stuck on how to find evil Russians with [[Mnogo Nukes]] on hand. Because, frankly, there's no one else with cruise missile subs and carriers for the US to fight.

 

 

 

More or less [[Truth in Television]]: while diplomatic relations between United States and Russia did improve after the end of the [[Cold War]], antagonism still exists between the said two countries. It should be noted that things gotten a bit more sour when [[Vladimir Putin]] came into play.

 

 

* [[Dale Brown]]- where Russia ''[[Mnogo Nukes|launches nukes]]'' at the USA.

* Pretty much every other computer game and novel with a modern warfare setting ([[Tom Clancy]] produces examples of ''both'').

** Except that ''The Hunt for Red October'', ''Red Storm Rising'' and ''Cardinal of the Kremlin'' were set ''during'' the [[Cold War]] and therefore are not a case of this trope. All subsequent depictions in his works of [[The New Russia]] after [[The Great Politics Mess-Up]] are generally accurate, if not overly idealistic.

* Spoofed by ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'', where Russia reveals that [[The Great Politics Mess-Up]] was a sham, and dramatically returns to its Soviet ways - including the Berlin Wall popping back up from the ground and the corpse of Lenin arising and staggering around his tomb, moaning "Must crush capitalism..."

{{quote|"The Soviet Union?" I thought you guys broke up.

** The [[Hand Wave]] is that Israel becomes something of a [[Last Fertile Region]] (or at least, much more fertile than it was before), and the Bear is just plain angry that Israel won't share the [[Applied Phlebotinum]] that made this possible. (All of this stems from the authors' interpretations of Biblical prophecies.)

* The ''Eclipse'' series by John Shirley has a resurrected Soviet Union.

* Apparently [[Humongous Mecha]] and [[Black Box]] technology prevented the Soviet Union from falling in ''[[Full Metal Panic!]]''.

* Arguably one of the first of these works is Barrett Tillman's ''[[The Sixth Battle]]'' from 1992, where a military coup overthrows the nascent Russian democracy, gets most of the former republics back into what is re-branded the Union of Eurasian Republics and then gets its allies together to invade [[The Apartheid Era|apartheid South Africa]].

* In ''[[Ender's Game]]'', Russia is mentioned frequently as being a threat, and at the end of the book they even launch a brief civil war within the IF. In later books they continue to make trouble. Although the original was written before the collapse of the Soviet Union, communism and the USSR are never mentioned, and the government is kept very vague.

** Its referred to as The Second Warsaw Pact composed of every state that was in the Soviet Union and the previous Warsaw Pact plus a couple more states (implied that it has some influence all the way up to the Netherlands).

* In ''[[Call of Duty]]: Modern Warfare 2'', a [[False-Flag Operation]] by an international terrorist prompts Russia (which has already been taken over by hardline Ultranationalists) to launch a retaliatory assault on the US.

* The first ''[[Deus Ex]]'' computer game, set in the near future, subtly implies that the Soviet Union might have risen again when the player encounters some emails with the domain "sovnet."

* In ''[[Canadian Bacon]]'', the executive branch of the US government ''tries'' to get Russia to fight with them again in an attempt to improve their approval ratings ([[Hilarious in Hindsight|predicting no one would]] [[Funny Aneurysm Moment|take a terrorist threat seriously]]).

* In ''[[Shattered Union]]'', Russia invades Alaska after Washington, D.C., is destroyed by [[Western Terrorists]] and the rest of the country splits into six factions, all vying for control. The hard-line Russian President Vladekov claims that Alaska should always have been a part of Russia and, since it's separate from the rest of the US, it has no business being a part of that country. Later on, it is revealed that {{spoiler|the Russian president masterminded the D.C. attack}}. It is also revealed that the Russian people are against the invasion and the military build-up and will rise up if Vladekov is sufficiently weakened by the re-unified US.

* Subverted in [[Fyodor Berezin]]'s ''Incoming Cataclysm'', where it is initially assumed that Russia may have gone back to its Soviet days, when an American base is destroyed by forces bearing the hammer-and-sickle red star. However, it is eventually determined that the attackers are from a [[Alternate Universe|parallel world]] where the Soviet Union is the dominant power. The rest of the novel is a major naval battle between our world's American carrier group and the other world's Soviet carrier group (the latter didn't really exist in [[Real Life]]). The parallel Soviets assume they're fighting ''their'' Americans (a pretty common occurance for them), while most of the American servicemen (except for the top brass) assume they're fighting some new unknown threat that uses Soviet symbology. Both sides use technology unknown (or seen as archaic) to the other, such as satellites and stealth ships for the Americans and ground effect planes and battleships for the Soviets. Both sides lose their supercarriers, which causes the Soviet forces to return to their native dimension (the rift was formed by the presence of active nuclear reactors).

* Several games in the ''[[Battlefield (series)|Battlefield]]'' series set in the modern era seem to go with this approach, pitting the Russians against the US. Notable examples include the ''[[Battlefield: Bad Company|Bad Company]]'' games, ''[[Battlefield Play4Free]]'', and ''[[Battlefield 3]]''.

* The game ''[[Vanquish]]'' has the Russians returning to a militaristic country, at odds with the rest of world, after a Military coup. This of course leads to them attacking the 51st American state; [[In Space]]!

* In ''[[Earth 2150|Earth 2140]]'' and its sequels, the [[The Empire|Eurasian Dynasty]] was formed after [[World War Three]] has destroyed all the old nation-states in the mid-21st century. A Russian Army colonel leads his remaining men from their bunker East into what used to be Mongolia, where they encounter the Khans, a nomadic tribe. Joining with them, the colonel proceeds to start conquering what's left of civilization in Europe and Asia. He also marries into the tribe, changes his name, and forms his own dynasty, which persists for another century. By the time of the ill-fated Dynasty's war with the [[Eagle Land|United Civilized States]], ED now controls all of Europe, Asia, and Africa using cyborg armies and military equipment that has not changed since the last war (and if that means going up against [[Humongous Mecha]] with old-fashioned tanks, so be it). They are the least technological faction in the games, but can easily out-produce the others, preferring the [[We Have Reserves]] approach.

** According to the ''Earth 2160'' intro, Russia went communist again in 2008. Troop movements followed, culminating in a nuclear strike against an (presumably) American naval battle group. After a bit, Washington, D.C., is leveled by a nuke. Then [[It Got Worse]]. There may be some [[Discontinuity]] here, as the [[All There in the Manual|manual]] for ''Earth 2150'' claims that the nuclear war started in the 2040s.

 

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