Mob War

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

The friction between two (or more) rival crime factions has broken out and exploded into all out warfare. This can happen between two groups of the same type/nationality (for example two Mafia families going at it) or between multiple nationalities. (I.e. The Mafiya taking on a Yakuza group). Two groups of Gang-Bangers getting into a Turf War to settle things once and for all also counts, as does The Syndicate clashing with another Syndicate or group.

This may be portrayed as a organized crime version of Feuding Families, and as with many portrayals of Feuding Families both sides are evil. Sometimes, the war comes from conflict between two factions within a single group, which tends to be a particularly bitter and usually short conflict. In this case it often doesn't matter who wins or loses, as the victor usually finds that their criminal empire has been smashed beyond repair by the conflict.

Expect to see at least half of the Guns and Gunplay Tropes put into effect, as well as lots of Stuff Blowing Up.

Examples of Mob War include:

Anime and Manga

  • In the Cowboy Bebop episode "Ballad of Fallen Angels," Spike's former Mentor, Mao Yenrai was killed in Vicious's introduction scene for trying to make peace between the Red Dragon Syndicate and another Mob. Later, the Red Dragons would have a mini civil war when Vicious launched his coup.
  • Black Lagoon: A constant threat in Roanapur.
    • Specifically, an all-out war against the Yakuza during the Fujiyama Gangster Paridise arc. However, it is noted that potential mob conflicts solve themselves once a third party gets involved: Roberta in the El Baille de la Muerte arc and Hansel and Grettel in the Vampire Twins arc.
  • In the Gungrave anime, the out-of-town Lightning organisation's attempt to take power from Millennion.
  • Baccano!! has several, most notably the one between the Gandors and the Runoratas in the "Drugs and Dominoes" arc. Likewise, there's serious bad blood between Jacuzzi's street gang and the Russo mafia family set up in Chicago, and part of the reason Jaccuzi's hitched a ride on a transcontinental train to New York is to escape their interest.
  • Essentially the plot of the second season of Durarara!!, and also a part of the back story for several characters.
  • Several arcs of Tokyo Crazy Paradise center on potential or actual mob wars, sometimes with Psycho Serum-fueled monsters.
  • Happens in Heat Guy J. The head of the Wei family is not happy that Clair has been made head of the Leonelli family (One, it interferes with the Wei family's power, and two Clair is nucking futz.) He tries to absorb the Leonelli family into his own, and when that fails, slights Clair (and attempts to poison him) at a luncheon/dinner. An all-out fight ensues, with great losses on both sides. Clair responds by sending a tanker truck full of napalm to the Wei family's district. Daisuke stops him, though. (In the manga, he dispenses with the napalm and has his girlfriend build a sexy gyndroid to seduce and strangle Wei. There is also no explicit mention of an all-out Mob War, though that could simply be because the manga is so short.)

Comic Books

  • Sin City occasionally features this, most notably with the Old Town Girls once resisting attempts from the mob to invade their turf and later striking back at The Mafia for the death of one of their own when she had been just an Innocent Bystander.
  • If a hero operates in a city and the series lasts more that 60 issues, this WILL be a storyline. Batman and Spider-Man have both had multiple Mob Wars in their respective series.
  • An early Savage Dragon storyline featured a mob war among superpowered criminals.
  • The Punisher's origin came when his family was killed in a botched mob hit during one of these.
  • The inspiration of the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2003 storyline "City At War" harks back to the one done for the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mirage comics, concluding its run. However, here, the storyline involved splinter factions of the Foot attempting to gain supremacy in New York before Karai took over.

Fan Works

  • Part of "Bushiko Ranma"'s Backstory in the Ranma ½ fanfic Ranma and Akane: A Love Story is his involvement in a war between different factions of the Hong Kong underworld when he was twelve, which due to the way the sides fell out, forced him to face a man he thought of as an older brother in deadly combat.

Film

  • This happens in The Godfather when Sonny decides to "go to the mattresses" after the attempt on his father's life, although there is remarkably little violence seen on-screen. The story of the mob war is told through newspaper headlines while Tessio plays on an out of tune piano.
  • Disney's The Rescuers,[context?]
  • Gangs of New York - In the movie it's immigrant Irish gangs vs. native-born Americans. In the book, it's basically every immigrant group vs. every other one. One memorable passage is about a street in the Lower East Side where all the Irish immigrants lived across the street from all the English immigrants. They'd go to work, go to their various pubs, get hammered, and then spill into the street and brawl almost every day.
  • Romeo Must Die featured a Chinese Mob and an African-American Syndicate on the edge of war.
  • Chicago was being torn apart by the violence between different mobs in The Untouchables. (And in real life).
  • B-movie Hollow Point featured a Syndicate with Italian, Russian and Chinese wings that all distrusted each other and, after being pushed by the protagonists, collapsed into fighting each other.
  • There are many yakuza movies dealing with Mob Wars, some outstanding ones are Kinji Fukasaku's Yakuza Graveyard and the Battles Without Honor Or Humanity series and Takeshi Kitano's Sonatine.
  • A Fistful of Dollars, the first film of the Man With No Name Trilogy, features this with the Baxters and the Rojos, two families vying for control in a small town.
  • In Scarface, mob war is part of what allows Tony Montana to rise to the top of the Miami drug trade. Later when Tony's standards get in the way of him doing business with The Cartel, his group gets wiped out in what is not so much a Mob War as a Mob Curb Stomping.
  • A Gang War kicks off in Miller's Crossing. Tom plays all sides against the middle in an effort to keep his friend Leo in the driver's seat. He succeeds, but is beaten up so often it's a wonder he can still walk, and ultimately gives up the girl, his friendship and position in the mob.
  • The title character of Lucky Number Slevin becomes the pawn of two mob bosses hostile to each other.
    • The key plot element is that it is still a Mob Cold War and neither is willing to start a shooting war yet. The protagonist is useful since it can be made to look like he acted on his own and not on the orders of one of the mob bosses.
  • Although the original is very much centered around a medieval Mob War, Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet explicitly recasts the conflict into a bloody feud between rival criminal families in a Florida city.
  • The Ur Example for film is probably the 1928 production Gang War, a part-talkie gangster film which is primarily notable for being the feature to which Steamboat Willie was attached.

Literature

  • Steven Brust's Dragaeran novel Yendi is about an all-out Mob War between Vlad's organization and a neighboring Jhereg crime boss.
  • In Small Favor, the possibility of a Mob War breaking out in Chicago is the least of the problems caused by the disappearance of Marcone, albeit still one of great concern to Dresden, and something which he uses to secure cooperation and a vital clue from one of Marcone's employees.
    • Marcone's rise to power was caused by a power vacuum from the aftermath of a Mob War.
  • Dashiell Hammett's novel Red Harvest, written in 1929, is possibly the ur-example of this trope, and is thought to have inspired Kurosawa's film Yojimbo, which in turn has been remade in different settings many times.

Live-Action TV

  • The threat of Tony Soprano's New Jersey mob family breaking out into open civil war or becoming embroiled with one of the New York families hangs overhead in several seasons of The Sopranos.
  • A major subplot in the second season of Rome deals with the various groups of the Roman underworld vying for control after a Power Vacuum opens up. This includes an all out showdown between the gang Vorenus created, (but being led by Pullo at that time) and another group.
  • Virtually the entire plot of Seasons 6 and 7 of The Shield is the Strike Team trying to start a Mob War in order to use them to kill off the other side. Throughout the series though, Vic and the Strike Team try to prevent mob wars as they obviously produce murders and cost everyone money.
  • In an episode of Spike TV's Deadliest Warrior, the 1920s Mafia went up against the late 1940s Yakuza in a five-on-five battle royale. Mafia won.
  • A gang war between the Barksdale crew and the emerging Stanfield crew was one of the (many, many) subplots in The Wire's third season.
  • Sons of Anarchy has an ever-shifting balance of power between the eponymous motorcycle club, their Mexican equivalents, the local neo-Nazis, the nearby black and Chinese gangs, and a splinter faction of the IRA.
    • Keeping the Sons out of a Mob War is a recurring theme in the series. They are quite satisfied with the status quo and an open conflict with any of the other factions is likely to severely weaken the club or even destroy it. They are very good at finding out the weakness of an enemy and striking a mutually beneficial deal to avoid a war.
    • The Sons were involved in a bloody Mob War years before the series began and although they won, they came out of it very weak and still feel the effects of it.
  • The Star Trek: The Original Series episode "A Piece of the Action" does this in satirical form.

Music

  • Gang wars are a common theme of hip-hop, and some think the massive Bloods-Crips war for Southern California may have led to the murders of Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur.
  • Michael Jackson's "Beat It" music video.
  • The 1974 Paper Lace song "The Night Chicago Died" is a fictional account of Al Capone's gang going to war with the Chicago police.
  • The Genesis song "Battle of Epping Forest", describing a London East End gang war.

Tabletop Games

  • The Shadowrun adventure Mob War details a civil war between Mafia factions, mixed up with a conflict between the Mafia and other crime groups such as the Yakuza. It takes place in Seattle in the year 2058.
    • In Fourth Edition, Seattle's still in the grip of one - Yakuza vs. Mafia vs. the Vory, with the survivors of a purge of Koreans from the Yakuza ranks trying to stay out of the way.

Theatre

  • The conflict between the Sharks and the Jets over "turf" in West Side Story is on the smaller end of the scale, but it is no less a Mob War for all that, and no less deadly.
  • Although it is a manifestation of a multigenerational family feud between the Montagues and the Capulets, the violence in the streets wracking Verona in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is basically a medieval Mob War, with each side composed of young toughs from the respective families and their allies.

Video Games

  • Baldur's Gate 2 features a war between the local thieves' guild and an upstart guild of vampires.
  • Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven is primarily about the mob war between Salieri and Morello families (except the last missions after Morello were defeated).
  • The plot of Def Jam: Fight For New York is about the battle between two gangs competing for control of New York's illegal underground fighting circuit.
  • Max Payne has the Punchinello mob and Vladimir's Russian syndicate going to war, with the title character caught in the middle of it.
  • And the John Woo game Stranglehold has the Golden Kane and a Russian syndicate joining forces against Dragon Claw, an established triad, with Tequila, the main character, caught in the middle of it.
  • A common plot device of most of the Grand Theft Auto games, as well as being the whole point of Saints Row. Even gangs that are at war with yours won't open fire unless you attack first in most of these games, with GTA3 being the notable exception. Some of the gangs become so hostile eventually that it's nearly impossible just to drive a car through their neighborhood without having it blown up by shotgun fire.
  • In Deus Ex, the Red Dragon triad is a war with the Luminous Path triad. Rather than a eliminating one side, the objective is to encourage a peace between the two.
  • Basically the point of X-rated PC game Daiakuji, where the player character is a gangster who fights other gangs and the authorities for control of a weird alternate reality version of 1930s Osaka.
  • In Shadow Hearts: From The New World, you end up in Chicago... and the game is set in the 1920s. One of your party members is a capo in Capone's mob, while another is in love with Capone's sister. Add some dark magic and the mob war gets weird.
  • Recurrent in the Way of the Samurai series.
  • The Godfather game lets us see the mob war between The Corleone family and the other mob families up close. It's pretty brutal.
  • Noctis' family vs. Stella's family in Final Fantasy Versus XIII, in which they compete for the Crystal that Noctis holds. There's a confirmation that there will be a major plotline battle between them, but the trailers imply otherwise.
  • One occurs on Nar Shaddaa in Knights of the Old Republic II near the end of its quest line, when the planet sized bounty for a Jedi is (seemingly) collected causing an end to the truce between the various families trying to collect on it. This is mostly off-screen in the original release, but you get to see some sides in open warfare on the streets with the officially endorsed (by the lead writer and the studio responsible for porting to Mac/Linux/Android/iOS and updating the PC port) restored content mod. The Hutts vs. Exchange that goes on in the background and the Serroco vs. Exchange fight you can provoke also count.

Web Comics

  • Homestuck: The Midnight Crew and The Felt are engaged in a fairly long one; when we first come into that part of the story, it's pretty much at its conclusion as the Crew mounts an assault on Felt Manor.

Web Original

  • There Will Be Brawl occurs to the backdrop of public unrest due to a Mob War going on between gangs controlled by Mewtwo, Ganondorf, King Dedede and Bowser. Also slightly subverted by the fact that Neither Dedede or Bowser were trying to fight a war. Ganon eventually brings down all the mobs, only to be killed themselves.

Western Animation

  • Parodied in The Simpsons with a conflict between The Mafia (who are backing Marge's pretzel making business) and the Yakuza (who are hired by the other ladies in town).
  • One of the "Goodfeathers" bits on Animaniacs did a spoof of West Side Story.
  • Occurs in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' "City at War" arc, with three factions—the local branch of The Foot, The Purple Dragons, and the generically-named "Mob"—fighting for control of the New York City underworld.
  • Occurs in the Gargoyles episode "Turf", between crime groups led by Tony Dracon and Tomas Brod, as both groups fight for control of the New York City underworld.
  • Occurs in The Spectacular Spider-Man's "Criminology 101" arc, with characters such as Silvermane and his daughter Silver Sable, Doctor Octopus, and Roderick Kingsley (the latter only in the first episode of the arc) fighting The Big Man for control of... well, you can probably guess.
    • A much smaller scale version appeared in the second season of Spider-Man: The Animated Series. Here, the aged Silvermane thought the Kingpin was weak (for failing to eliminate Spider-Man, natch) and not fit for his position. The two sides were determined to dispose of the other, though their conflict didn't engulf the whole city.

Real Life

  • This Troper heard a weird story from a missionary at his Church that collects blankets for homeless people in Portland, Oregon. While the missionary was busy working a local hitman came up and gave him a hat to wear to signal neutrality in gang feuds because no one wanted to fire on charity workers, and perhaps because no one wanted the extra heat and everyone knew gangsters would likely end up among the homeless when they were too old to be skilful criminals. The funny thing was that this was Portland, which is hardly 1930s Shanghai. But well, things happen.
  • The chariot racing fans in the Byzantine Empire formed themselves into something resembling a Mafia. They had regular riots against each other, terrorized the populace, and at times got into politics.
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