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{{trope}}
In [[Real Life]], [[War Is Hell|warfare is hardly an entertaining and carefree experience]], and [[Harmful to Minors|can seriously mess with kids' heads]]... [[Child Soldier|not to mention their bodies]]. However, warfare and fighting can easily make for good, clean fun in entertainment media, and is often marketed to children. Most parents and [[Media Watchdogs]] are okay with media portraying '''Non-Lethal Warfare''', regardless of the nature of the combat, its origins, the fridge logic or the unfortunate implications it may engender. No matter how lethal the weapons are, how dangerous the environment is, what the attitudes to enemy combatants and civilians are, [[Bloodless Carnage|no-one gets hurt]] and no-one dies. At least, not on-screen.
Commonly, the combatants will [[Inverse Law of Sharpness and Accuracy|use weapons]] or [[Inverse Law of Utility and Lethality|powers]] that [[Tap
We should mention the rules set out above assume that the setting allows for the possibility of death at all, and that it can happen off-screen. If the target audience is too young even for that, the scale of Nerfed violence increases (er, decreases?). No one will use bladed weapons or guns (arrows [[Incredibly Lame Pun|might fly]], though.), traps, tanks, and other large scale weapons will be completely non-lethal, perhaps even designed to humiliate the enemy rather than knock them out. Likely "weapons" for use will be "[[Pure Energy|energy]]" guns that are about as dangerous as laser tag guns... scratch that, ''less'' dangerous. Laser tag guns can at least potentially blind you. Or perhaps blunt weapons that "can't kill" because they don't cause bleeding.
This trope isn't an indicator on the quality of the on-screen fighting though, which doesn't need to be lethal or [[Scars Are Forever|scarring]] to be entertaining. If it were to be considered [[Tropes Are Not Bad|"bad"]] it's only when it fails to carry [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief]].
Compare with [[Bloodless Carnage]]. Contrast with how [[Snowball Fight
See also [[Stun Guns]].
{{examples|Examples}}▼
== [[Anime]] ==
* ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' had this kind of war at the end of the school festival, with the attendees playing magicians fighting off a Martian invasion. With lots of magical guns and staffs against robots with [[Clothing Damage|clothing destroying lasers]] and telportation bullets. What do you mean real magic, [[Blatant Lies|it's all CGI folks!]] This only worked due to the only actual Martian (we think) {{spoiler|Chao Lingshen}} being a total [[Anti
* ''[[Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko]].''
* In ''
** They also schedule their battles ahead of time and give the population time to evacuate the combat zone before they start.
* In ''[[Pokémon Special]]'', [[Well
* Zigzagged in [[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]. The fluff details horrifically violent conflicts in the distant past
* ''[[Toshokan Sensou]]''. All the beligerents wear military-grade body armour. With few exceptions, their guns appear chambered for handgun bullets. Result: People get shot, people fall down with nasty bruises and possibly some cuts and are out of the fight. Few, if anyone, actually dies. This system seems to have been implemented on purpose since the Media Cleansing Comittee and the libraries are, essentially, involved in an institutionalized [[Civil War]] under state supervision.
* The entire premise of ''[[Dog Days]]'': war is literally a sport, complete with commentators, live coverage, betting and quite a lot of fanfare. When someone is slashed by a sword, they don't die, they temporarily turn into a cute ball-shaped kitten/puppy. Justified, in that they wage their wars in a protected space that grants this ability to everyone there (except Shinku, [[Informed Flaw|supposedly]]).
** Of course this becomes a plot point later on as wild monsters are not subject to this rule.
* [[
== Board Games ==
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* In The ''[[Warriors of Virtue]]'' the forces of good an evil have been at war for years.. but never kill anyone. Ever. The leader of the good guys accidentally killed someone before the start of the film and the titular heroes are about to go their separate ways in disgust. When the human POV character asks why everyone is so aghast at the idea a war might result in death he is repeatedly shouted down. "IT WAS A LIFE!"
* In ''[[Mystery Men]]'', the heroes go to see Dr. Heller, who told them that he was a weapons designer. However, he didn't say he designed non-lethal weapons, which leaves them unimpressed and disappointed, until he demonstrates two of his weapons: a tornado-in-a-can and a blamethrower.
==[[Literature]]==
*In [[The Winds of War and War and Remembrance]] Byron Henry visit's the horse racing tournament in Sienna where every neighborhood sponsors a team and while cheating is of course illegal, trying to get away with cheating is ubiquitously accepted and thus [[Fridge Logic|part of the rules.]] The neighborhoods spend weeks before each tournament spying on each other and making deals. The father of Byron's girlfriend thinks it a [[Foreshadowing|satire on European nationalism.]]
== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* The ''[[
* ''[[The A-Team]]'': Though there was lots of gun play and death threats throughout the show's run, fire fights never actually resulted in anyone getting killed or even injured.
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== [[Visual Novels]] ==
* ''[[Maji
== [[Web Comics]] ==
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** Actually, the really bizarre thing about [[G.I. Joe]] looking back at it as an adult is that their "laser guns" don't look like sci-fi weapons at all, instead virtually all the guns are animated to ''look'' like realistic depictions of identifiable real-world guns. Snake Eyes clearly is packing an Uzi, Duke blasts away on what's obviously a Colt .45, Falcon has a pump-action shotty etc. etc. But instead of firing bullets, these realistic firearms inexplicably shoot lasers, which is very dissonant. Sometime you can even see the guns expelling shell casings! That's right kids, LASER BULLETS!
*** [[Fridge Logic|Oxidized Copper tracers?]]
*** ''Resolute'', an 11-episode miniseries created to hype the movie, averted this. The guns actually do fire bullets (they did feature red muzzle flash and blue muzzle flash as a shoutout). There's plenty of [[A
*** Most other adaptations (like the comics and the movie) brutally avert this, as we've got characters on both sides firing real bullets and actually scoring some kills against enemies.
* Battles in ''[[Transformers]]'' tend to involve lots of lasers and big weapons, but characters rarely die outside the movies and some of the comics. Even if they do, [[Death Is Cheap]] in ''Transformers''. This was averted most visibly in ''[[
** However, one episode of ''[[
** Heavily averted during the first act of ''Transformers: [[The Movie]]''
** ''[[Transformers Animated]]'' seems to instead largely avoid showing direct warfare: most of the battles we see are small scale, and all of the fighting in [[Shell Shocked Senior|Ratchet's]] flashbacks are implied instead of shown.
* The ''[[Sonic
** Early in the second season, a temporarily de-roboticized Uncle Chuck explains that the mind actually ''doesn't'' go away, and the roboticized person is simply aware of what is going on around them [[And I Must Scream|without any way to control themselves.]] It's debatable as to whether this made it better or [[Fate Worse Than Death|worse]].
** There's also the first episode, where the Freedom Fighters fend off Robotnik's robots with catapults shooting water balloons at them.
* ''[[
* ''[[Rambo the Force of Freedom]]'' has a very low body count compared to the latter movies.
* In ''[[An American Tail]]: Fievel Goes West'' the final climactic battle is fought with slingshots rather than real guns.
* ''[[WITCH (
* In ''[[
** Although they then blow the entire mountain face away with the war balloon's engine, so there's not a whole lot of room to get around how very dead the attackers are. Sokka's probably a better example: in the first two-and-a-half seasons, he favors his boomerang and is reasonably good at hitting people, generally resulting in knockouts. Once he has his sword, though, he's limited mostly to hitting terrain and weapons. This despite him sharpening his boomerang on several occasions...
* Codename:[[Kids Next Door]] Has the [[Badass Army]] of [[Badass Adorable|kids]] at war with various adult villians who wish to oppress, harm, and enslave the world's children, and while most villians don't seem to shy away from trying to kill their KND foes, you never see it happen, nor do you see any KND Operatives [[Thou Shalt Not Kill|doing any of the sort to them]].
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* Sports is in essence non-lethal warfare. The competition can be real, (Cold War Olympics?) but the body count is significantly reduced.
* Many cultures used to practice non-lethal warfare such as in the Native American custom of 'Counting Coup' (where a combantant would essentially touch a rival with a stick and that counted as a winning blow in a battle) this did not prove to be an effective form of warfare against european colonists.
* Several tribal societies meet at certain times of the year with neighbors and line up to fight until they are stopped by their elders, typically at "first blood" or something similar. This led anthropologists to believe they were far more gentle then they were. In fact the normal form conflict takes among them is more often thievery and exchange of assassination and can generate casualties far more in proportion to the population then a major war among a technological people while these ritual "battles" were more noticeable for raiding parties were off in the bush where the anthropologist was not. This phenomenon by comparison, though real territorial and political stakes can be wagered, is often more a tourney then a battle, for it is a way for young warriors to show off their skills, and they will often have a party afterwards (one people mentioned in Keegan's ''History of Warfare'' had the custom of deliberately fattening pigs in the expectation of feasting after one of these fights). Battle as we think of it by contrast had to wait for special circumstances like riches that must be defended and strongly tempt attack (in other words cities and intense cultivation) as well as the possibility of siege which few tribal peoples have the skills for even though they may have strongpoints. Also battle requires a conqueror with the willingness and firm authority to press a land grab beyond a few bits of fallow ground that the other team is willing to lose if need be. Which in turn requires an authority many tribal patriarchs do not really have.
* Several Italian towns had traditional ritual rumbles between neighborhoods. This went through the spectrum from a gaudy but more or less harmless pageant to something not dissimilar from a gang fight. This phenomenon is in some ways like the seasonal ritual fights among tribal peoples described above.
* Similarly pranking was once [[Serious Business]] in Italy, where honor was very important and was best gotten by plundering it from someone else. Variations of this included seducing another family's women, to drawing graffiti on someone's house (as ability to protect one's women and dwelling was an important part of honor) to just knocking someone's hat on the ground (as the face was the most honorable part, and knocking his had off defiled his face). Sometimes pranks grew to a level where they evolved from non-lethal feuds to lethal feuds, as some insults were considered ''so'' serious as to require bloodshed.
* Espionage. At least when the powers are friendly enough to not bother assassinating each other or each other's stooges.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Combat Tropes]]
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