Silly Reason for War: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
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Depending on how [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism|idealistic]] the story is, the protagonists may persuade the aliens/elves/mutants/pastry chefs to reconcile their differences or accept their differences and finally give living peacefully a shot. However, if it's going for the [[Downer Ending]], then expect the hero's efforts to be for naught as the conflict escalates and they wipe each other out.
Most early instances of [[Fantastic Racism]] were based on
This is a [[Sub-Trope]] of [[Serious Business]]. Related to [[Fantastic Racism]]. See [[What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous?]] for when it's humans acting like this, and it doesn't (usually) end in war. Compare [[Pretext for War]], where two sides seize upon any reason they can to go to war, without actually caring about the reason itself. When it's a mere domestic squable, it might be a [[Toilet Seat Divorce]].
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== Anime & Manga ==
* In ''[[Slayers]] Gorgeous'', heroes...er, ''[[Anti-Hero|protagonists]]'' Lina Inverse and Naga the Serpent find themselves caught in a civil war between a local lord and his daughter, who's raised an army and marched on the palace. Her reason for rebellion? She wants a bigger allowance.
** And she already ''gets'' a pretty large one (which she is using to bankroll her rebellion - why her father is still paying her allowance while she's rebelling is never brought up), which is why her father is so worked up about her
** And it also happens in ''Slayers: Great'', where the father and son of a famous golem-making family, Galia and Huey, are fighting a personal battle that they eventually try to settle by building giant golems and having them fight each other. The reason: Galia is obsessed with making [[Kawaii]] golems, to the extent he builds his mega-golem in the form of a [[Chibi]] Lina Inverse, even going so far as to spend time and effort causing it to make cute sound effects when it steps or does anything. Huey, on the other hand, is into ultra-realistic
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** As a whole, this was parodying the language divide issues in Belgium.
* In ''[[Dilbert]]'', Elbonia erupted into civil war between the left-handed and right-handed people. Dilbert quickly lost patience trying to explain that it's "an arbitrary distinction." ("Geez, you lefties are thick. I'm glad ''I'm'' [[Hypocritical Humor|normal]].")
** Amusingly, Dilbert ''is'' left-
* During his [[Not So Different]] rant in ''[[The Killing Joke]]'', the Joker remarks that the last world war was caused by a dispute over how many telegraph poles Germany owed as war reparations. Which, true or not, he evidently finds hilarious.
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* Alexander Pope's ''[[The Rape of the Lock]]'' dramatizes a real-life incident that happened to friends of his, wherein a young lady's fiancee stole a lock of her hair without asking permission ("rape" here meaning "seize forcibly", as in the case of the infamous bucket, above). The brouhaha was so ridiculous that Pope turned it into a full-scale ''epic,'' complete with miniature gods, a [[Battle Royale With Cheese]], and [[What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?|descriptions of coffee, card games, and petticoats that would make]] [[Manly Tears|Achilles weep.]]
* The ''[[Star Trek]]'' [[Expanded Universe]] novel ''I, Q'' told of a war between the Q and another race of similarly omnipotent beings, the M. These two [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien|impossibly advanced species]] both admitted the real reason for their catyclysmic conflict was "there's just something about you that just really pisses me off." The war itself is kicked off when one of them blurts out, "[[Minor Insult Meltdown|Your mother!]]"; nobody now knows who said it or who it was directed at. Both sides also show near [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|fourth-wall breaking]] [[Genre Savvy|Genre Savviness]]: they're both aware enough to realize that in their reality every race ''always'' manages to get balanced out by some other race which exists to be an opposing force and source of plot. If they made up with their obvious opposite numbers, it would inevitably lead to a serious threat to both of them showing up.
* In ''[[Vorkosigan Saga|A Civil Campaign]]'', it's mentioned that the Barrayarans once fought a minor war over whether the Emperor or his District Counts had control over a substance extremely useful in the terraforming effort. Since Imperial power is [[Serious Business]] on Barrayar, and since terraforming a planet with almost no technology is ''hard'', this war isn't that
** The way Miles tells it in-story, it was the sort of war that underemployed minor aristocrats start whenever they have a cashflow problem or feel like expanding their territory and think they can get away with it, but it seems to have ground to a halt quite quickly when the [[Honour Before Reason|Barrayaran]] [[Proud Warrior Race|Vor ruling class]] became dimly aware it was a silly [[Pretext for War]] even by their standards.
* In [[Use of Weapons]], part of the [[Culture Series]] of sci-fi novels, one of the many, many, many military conflicts the protoganist took part in was an unending and brutal war on an ice planet. Ostensibly, the war was for control of the constantly shifting iceberg masses that made up the only land surface on the planet. But since these icebergs are inevitably destroyed/melt as they move towards the equator, no victory ever means anything for more than a few months, but the war continues on and on, as both sides had grown to hate the other too much to admit the whole thing was pointless...
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* Rather than hold elections or have kings, the Drazi in ''[[Babylon 5]]'' randomly divide their population between "green and purple" scarf wearers, fight non-lethally, and the side with [[Asskicking Equals Authority|most victories got to rule]] for the next year. This causes all manner of problems on Babylon 5 when the faction war breaks out on the station in the vicinity of non-Drazi, especially when the greens decide that the 'non-lethal' part of the rules can be glossed over in the interest of victory.
* On ''[[Red Dwarf]]'', Cat's people wiped themselves out fighting a war over what color the hats at Lister's hot dog stand were supposed to be. What's particularly sad is [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog|that neither side got it right]].
** In the novelization, it again conjures the dispute over the Nicaean Creed, as the dispute is over Lister's
* The ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]'' episode "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" featured two aliens with their face divided in two halves by black and white, one with the right side white and left side black and the other with the colors reversed. One is a lawman out to capture the other for [[Does This Remind You of Anything?|inciting "race riots"]], and after he hijacks the Enterprise to help him return the fugitive to their planet, they discover it had long since destroyed itself in a race war. Despite this, they just keep fighting and descend to their ruined world, after which a dejected Kirk orders the Enterprise home.
** An episode of ''Enterprise'' featured a slightly updated version of the same basic plot -a War on Terror allegory instead of a Civil Rights one, and not ''quite'' as [[Anvilicious]]- with the titular ship getting caught in the middle of a war started by religious schism over whether creation took nine days or ten. At the end of the episode, it turns out their civilisation had destroyed itself, just like the previous incident.
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* Orcs/Orks in ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]'' and ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' don't ''need'' any reason to kill their enemies (or each other), but they'll take any opportunity at justification in order to do so. For example, there's two Orkish gods, Gork and Mork, one being the god of cunning brutality and the other of brutal cunning. If given the chance, Orks will fight over ''which is which''.
** This specific schism was used in the late 90s spin-off game ''Gorkamorka'' in which a load of Orks stranded on a planet got into a civil war over whether the space hulk they were (kind of) trying to rebuild to escape was Gork or Mork - in the ensuing conflict, the hulk was destroyed, but they continued to nominally work on it afterwards anyway, and still remained divided between "Gorkers" and "Morkers". This would be a [[Downer Ending]] in any other universe - here, it just kind of makes sense.
** In ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay]]'', orcs have a special rule that requires them to make a willpower check to ''avoid'' picking a fight with the nearest orc if given the slightest provocation to do
* Also in ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay]]'', [[French Jerk|Bretonnian]] [[Aristocrats Are Evil|nobles]] are noted to be notoriously thin-skinned and will war with each other for the silliest of reasons (such as an flippant insult) if not restrained by their liege lords. This is especially true in regions of Brettonia where there are no orcs or beastmen to fight. In fact, one particular pair of [[Feuding Families]] are still going at it over an alleged ravishing that happened several hundred years ago (if it happened at all) and which both sides claim to be the victimized party in. The feud is so formalized the time and place of any battles are agreed upon in advance, fought according to a timetable, and are apparently a great spectator sport for neighbouring nobility and peasants.
* Any given Beholder in ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' is engaged in a never-ending race war against any Beholders not of its breed, killing them on sight. While there are some varieties that are vastly different in terms of appearance and philosophy, they will fight over any difference at all, even ones that anyone other than a beholder would never notice. Of course, there is the true Beholder, whose form would clearly be the correct form for a beholder to have. Unfortunately, whenever any beholder sees it the thing looks exactly like them.
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* Note: While many of these wars were ''caused'' by ridiculous things, they are often the culmination of larger tensions between two enemy states that may go back for generations.
* The [[Meaningful Name|Pastry War]] of 1838. A Franco-Mexican war that expanded to include Great Britain and United States. During the course of the conflict, France captured almost the entire Mexican fleet, the Republic of Texas moved further into the orbit of the USA, and former Mexican dictator Santa Anna was wounded in a clash with Mexican soldiers, paving the way for him to return to power. In the end, the British intervened and forced Mexico to pay France the 600'000 pesos compensation that France had demanded in the first place. Compensation for what, you may ask? The property of a French baker in Mexico having been damaged by Mexican army officers, ''10 years previously''.
* The Nika Riots of 532 AD, when supporters of two rival teams of chariot racing (supported by two different Christian sects) broke out in fighting that ended up snowballing into riots that burned half the city of Constantinople ''and'' a full-fledged coup attempt, and resulted in the deaths of thousands massacred by the professional army. Chariot racing was [[Serious Business]]
* "The Football War" was a brief four-day war between El Salvador and Honduras in 1969 that started with a soccer riot. 3000 people (soldiers and civilians) died and 300,000 people were displaced. However, this is more a case of the riot lighting the fuse on existing tensions than actually going to war over the match.
* Whilst the degree of collateral damage rarely approaches the same level as the above two examples, team sports in general count as a pretty silly reason for mass riots. Usually subverted in practice, however, as the game's outcome is merely a [[Pretext for War|pretext]] for violence mostly fueled by [[Misplaced Nationalism]] and/or historical bad blood; Glasgow-based football teams Rangers and Celtic are a famous example of the latter, having become the focal point of the city's longstanding sectarian tensions.
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** The true reason for the battle of Zappolino was the control of the region during the [[Civil War|war between Guelphs and Gibbelines]] (which definitely counts as [[Serious Business]]) and the bucket was taken as a mock trophy when the battle, although bloody, ended in the stalemate. This is also exactly the reason that a large battle (comparable with battles of Agincourt or Tannenberg numbers-wise) is largely unknown and usually mentioned only in reference to the mock-heroic poem written three centuries later.
* Narrowly averted in 1859 with "the Pig War", when an American farmer on the San Juan Islands near Vancouver, Canada, disputed between the US and Britain, killed a British-owned pig rooting in his garden. British authorities tried to arrest the farmer, and the American community on the islands called for US protection. When both sides realized that it was insane to "involve two great nations in a war over a squabble about a pig," in the words of the British commander on the scene, they set up a joint military presence and called in German mediation. (Which eventually decided in favor of the Americans.)
* In 1900, in what is now Ghana, a war broke out between the British and Ashanti Empires over a golden stool. To the Ashanti, the golden stool was an object of immense cultural and spiritual significance, representing the souls of all Ashanti, dead, living, and unborn. The British governor, Frederick Hodgson, was unaware of this, believing it was simply a throne and rather unfortunately demanded the Ashanti hand it over so that he could sit on it. The result: 3,000 deaths, the dissolution of the Ashanti Empire, and the British never found the stool. The Ashanti to this day consider it a win, since their objective has been
* The Spartans liked to take this trope [[Up to Eleven|one step further]] by going to war for ''no reason at all.'' At one point, according to Xenophon, they attacked the city state of Elis, literally and entirely "[[Blood Knight|because they had no one else to fight at the time]]."
* [[wikipedia:Macedonia naming dispute|The Macedonia naming dispute.]] [[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgement|That is all.]]
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* ''[[Cracked.com]]'' has a list of [http://www.cracked.com/article_17123_the-5-most-retarded-wars-ever-fought.html the five most retarded wars ever fought].
* One of the many incidents over Chaco in South America was inflamed by a postage stamp showing it as part of Paraguay.
* Subverted and Lampshaded by one King of Prussia who was angry with the King of England. He wanted to issue a challenge to a [[Duel to the Death]] on the grounds that their respective kingdoms had no interest in it, so they shouldn't be dragged in. The [[Obstructive Bureaucrat
* Once upon a time, relations between Greece and Bulgaria were rather strained. One day, a dog ran away from his owner in Greece over the boarder into Bulgaria, and his owner, a soldier, ran after him. The solider was shot dead by Bulgarian sentries. The resulting war was called "The War of the Stray Dog."
* In 1976, Operation [[Meaningful Name|Paul Bunyan]] was started because two US Army officers were killed. The reason? They were chopping down a tree in the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Granted, South Korea and North Korea had quite a lot of tension between them, this was supposedly a scheduled trimming.
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