39,327
edits
Blood Sport: Difference between revisions
update links
(update links) |
|||
Line 13:
Usually, the deaths will be of the many young rookie players, but sometimes, a veteran slips up, or a longtime feud will come to a sudden, violent end. Frequently, the players are [[Condemned Contestant]]s and their violent deaths are part of the attraction.
These sports may form the central part of the story, but in many cases, they're just shown or described as a way of letting the audience know just how messed-up this world has become.
A slightly more optimistic variation is where the Blood Sport has come around as an alternative to actual wars. In many cases, it will often be actual fighting, only more ritualized. Of course, if you thought sports was [[Serious Business]] before...
Also common in many martial arts stories, with pit fighting and Kumite-style tournaments where people fight to the death.
Line 31:
** The Scrapyard also has gladiatorial combat between giant cyborgs for entertaining the masses.
* The Gundam Fight from ''[[Mobile Fighter G Gundam]]'' is described in-show as "A war based on the principles of sportsmanship", with every country in the world being represented by a [[Motion Capture Mecha]] piloted by a trained fighter. Although the battles are (usually) bloodless, the Mobile Trace system that runs the [[Humongous Mecha]] feeds back any damage incurred on them back to the pilot as physical pain. Thus, for example, if your machine has its arm torn off, you will feel as though your ''own'' arm just got torn off. The fact that many such injuries are simply shrugged off as an annoyance is one of the many reasons why just about [[World of Badass|everybody in the show]] is a major [[Badass]].
* ''[[Space Adventure Cobra]]'' has a sort of "no-holds-barred" version of Base-ball called "Rug-ball" where the idea is to reach each base in one piece... Naturally, there are a few deaths involved, and [[Badass|naturally]] , Cobra proves himself to be a spectacular player.
* One episode of ''[[Kino's Journey]]'' features a pair of cities whose constant warfare has been replaced by regular pogroms of the local villages. The cities compete to see who gets the most kills.
** Compare [[Clive Barker]]'s "In the Hills, the Cities."
** And then there was the city where people constantly fought each other in arena for status, and any travellers who entered were automatically forced to participate. The winner would become a first class citizen, and could also make a new law for the city. Kino probably ended up making the place even more bloody than it already was, but also ensured peace in the long term.
* Similarly, the Zoid Battles featured in ''[[Zoids]] New Century Zero'' and ''Fuzors'' are Humongous Mecha cockfights. Somewhat subverted in that there are multiple rules and restrictions in place to prevent death, though serious injury is a very viable possibility...
* The anime ''[[Starship Girl Youko Yamamoto]]'' centers around a game that replaced war in which teams of small, agile spacecraft dogfight each other. Fortunately, highly advanced teleportation technology means that the pilots rarely die.
Line 59:
== Film ==
* ''[[Gladiator]]'', and any other film featuring [[Gladiator Games]].
* The [[B-Movie]] ''[[Death Race 2000]]'' revolves around a cross-country race where contestants scored points for mowing down pedestrians.
* Its remake, ''[[Death Race]]'', deals with a closed-circuit race on an island prison, where the competitors are death row inmates racing for their freedom. ''Death Race 2'', a prequel, shows how it began as a cage fight and how they brought cars into the formula to increase ratings.
Line 66:
* In ''[[Future Sport]]'', the titular game is the world's most popular sport after the NBA was destroyed by scandal ([[Take That]], soccer fans!), and was originally used as a replacement for gang wars. It is, needless to say, extremely violent and very [[Serious Business]], with the fate of Hawaii being decided by a game of it.
* ''[[Escape from New York]]'': Snake Plissken vs a huge guy. First they fight with baseball bats, then with baseball bats with huge nails.
* The [[Jean
* The titular Thunderdome in ''[[Mad Max]] Beyond Thunderdome''.
* ''[[Danny the Dog]]'' (a.k.a. ''Unleashed'') features an underground pit-fighting circuit involving barbed wire on the walls, axes, spears, and sledgehammers.
* "Rehabilitation" in ''[[Idiocracy]]'' is a judicial sentence as well as a televised event. The convict faces armed "corrections" personnel in a gladiator-style match featuring monster trucks, explosions and plenty of phallic imagery.
* ''The Blood of Heroes'' is about a post-apocalyptic world where the heroes make a living playing a game that involves hitting each other with chains and huge clubs while one person is trying to score a touchdown with a dog's skull.
* The film version of ''[[The Running Man (film)|The Running Man]]'' involves this, set up by a [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]] to deal with condemned criminals. {{spoiler|If the contestants are really "criminals" is another story.}}
Line 86:
{{quote|''"The good news is, you made the Orcball team! The bad news is...as the ball."''|'''Sgt.Major Guzrak''', ''Grunts!''}}
** Since there's no rules, the halfling team decides this means they can play Orcball mounted on horses with polo mallets. The orcs decide that means they can use mounts too. Harley-Davidsons, specifically.
* [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[The Running Man (novel)|The Running Man]]''. In this version, TV is free and is dominated by bloody gameshows where desperate contestants agree to risk life and limb for the chance at cash prizes. The most popular show, "Running Man" offers the biggest reward, but is almost certain suicide. The contestant is set loose into society, and viewers are asked to keep a watch out for him and provide tips for the show's bounty hunters.
* Another [[Stephen King]] as Richard Bachman: ''[[The Long Walk]]''. 100 teenage males are required to walk at no less than [[American Customary Measurements|four miles per hour]], with no breaks. Drop below 4 miles an hour and you draw a warning. Walk for an hour without going below the limit and you lose a warning from your record. You can have up to 3 warnings and continue. Draw a fourth warning, and the army grunts who've been tailing the Walkers the entire time shoot you in the head. Last person left alive wins. The Walk follows the same route every year (the end point varies, naturally), and crowds gather to watch when it passes through their area. News updates when Walkers are eliminated or reach certain significant points on the route are broadcast nationwide, too—characters mention as a matter of course that the Walk is the national pastime.
* [[Robert Sheckley]]'s ''Victim Prime'' and ''The Tenth Victim'' are both set in a world where war has been replaced by "The Hunt". Taking place on a Caribbean island, The Hunt is quite simple: pay your entry fee, then face ten hunts against the same opponent, five as the Hunter and five as the Victim. The Victim is not only allowed, but expected to try to kill the Hunter. Bonus points are awarded for style and ingenuity, points are deducted for unnecessary collateral damage and killing non-victims. The very few who survive all ten hunts are treated as huge celebrities.
Line 93:
* While not a focus, passing mention is given to Brockian Ultra-Cricket in ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]''. It's been noted that rules disagreements end up at times starting wars. Which, all things considered, are considered more healthy.
* The "ritual war game" variety is featured in ''[[Ecotopia]]'', where it's used as an outlet for people's aggression and warlike instincts.
* Blood sports are (naturally) one of the entertainments on offer in [[China Mieville]]'s ''[[Bas-Lag Cycle|Bas-Lag]]'' novels, with one of the protagonists in ''[[Perdido Street Station]]'' being a veteran of the city of New Crobuzon's not-exactly-legal underground arena circuit.
** And in a very literal example in ''[[The Scar]]'', the scabmettler's ritual dueling system.
* In [[Dune]] by Frank Herbert there are at least two blood sports. Notably, these are sponsored by both in the antagonist and protagonist Houses. One is seen in detail: the Harkonnens have classical gladiatorial matches (with the additions of personal shields (read: force fields)) which the na-baron Feyd-Rautha participates in. Frequently. The second is bull fighting. The Atreides apparently took part in this, though only off camera. They may have stopped in recent years leading up to the book because a bull killed the Old Duke, Duke Leto's father. In the ring. He was fighting it at the time. Actually, at the time he was being gored by it, but you get the point.
* These show up in the [[Riftwar]] cycle, where slaves and prisoners of war are made to fight for entertainment in Kelewan.
* This is common in the [[Time Scout]] series. Ancient Rome is a tourist destination. So is Ancient Mongolia. And Late Modern Denver, and Medieval Japan. A lot of these places have dangerous games. Like boxing. And ritual sacrifice, game style.
* Although not technically a combat game, the Scottish boulder-catching sport of Creaothceann from ''[[Quidditch Through the Ages]]'' was eventually banned, due to its extremely high player mortality rate.
* ''The Year of the Flood'', parallel novel to ''[[Oryx and Crake]]'', has Painball, a highly violent version of paintball played by convicts and televised.
* ''Killerbowl'', by Gary K. Wolf, is centered around "street football", a version of American football which is played in a 24-square-block area of the host city. The players are armed with knives, bolo clubs, and spears, and every team has one "hidden safety", who has a rifle with one bullet. Oh, and a single match takes ''a whole day'' to complete.
* ''[[The Hunger Games]]'' in which kids are selected to compete, taken to the city, dolled up for sponsers, trained and set loose in an arena to kill each other. Made worse by the fact the people controlling it can make anything happen from letting loose mutants, to sending out contract killers to creating natural disasters.
Line 109:
* In the short-lived ''[[Max Headroom]]'' series, this trope is subverted. An evil TV executive was hyping a new sport involving melee weapons and teenage skateboarders, and did all kinds of nasty things to ensure there'd be spectacular violence ... but when players started dropping on camera, the studio audience ''booed'' and the ratings plummeted. The public apparently was NOT eager for that kind of gratuitous gore (yet).
* Used in ''[[The Outer Limits]]'' episode "Judgement Day."
* The ''[[Babylon 5]]'' episode "TKO" introduces the intergalactic sport of "moo-tai," which sounds suspiciously like "muay Thai" but is more a [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture|fantasy counterpart]] to karate. Combatants wear a gi with a colored belt, practice in dojos, and ritually bow to each other. The ancient grand master who presides over the fights is basically a kung fu movie stock character wearing an alien mask.
* In the ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]'' episode "Bread and Circuses," the [[Power Trio]] ends up in [[Planet of Hats|Rome crossed with the 1960s]], where traditional-style gladiator battles are televised sport events.
* In ''[[Deep Space Nine]]'' episode "By Infernos Light" Worf is held captive by the Dominion and forced to fight a series of Jem'hader to the death as a Jem'hader training exercise.
* [[Angel]] ends up fighting in an arena in the first season of his show.
== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[BattleTech]]'''s Clans are the latter version of this trope - rules of warfare and codes of honour shared among the clans are carefully designed to minimize interplanetary collateral damage, discourage brawling, and avoid hard feelings - at least the dirty personal conflicts-kind.
** See also the planet of Solaris VII, which is known across the galaxy for commercial mech-fights.
* The ''[[Dungeons
** In the Mystara setting, "court ball" is a blood sport favored by several Aztec-based cultures. In the Hollow World, athletic Blacklore elves engage in dangerous aerial duels on hoverboards, attacking one another with flame-cutters. (Not really a sport, they're just bored out of their minds.)
* The wargame/[[Tabletop Games|Tabletop RPG]] hybrid ''[[Car Wars]]'', from Steve Jackson Games: not only is the favorite sport "autoduelling" ([[Vehicular Combat]] with armed stock cars), but its primary competitor is "combat football".
* ''[[Battle Cars]]'' is another game about dueling cars.
* The universe of ''[[Shadowrun]]'' has both "Urban Brawl" (essentially paintball or airsoft sans paint and soft) and "Combat Biker" (motorcycle polo with guns). American football is also implied to be a good deal bloodier, as players are all cyber-enhanced for increased performance.
** In Germany there's even combat football (or soccer, if you like). Jamming an opposing player's head into a camera is a great way of neutralizing obstacles on your way to the goal.
Line 128:
** Even bloodier sports are practiced in Aztlan, including modern-day Aztec Court Ball matches and deadly last-man-standing game shows like ''Suerte y Muerte''.
* Aside from the good old-fashioned Gladiator arenas found in many places, the ''[[Rifts]]'' setting includes a whole list of "Juicer" sports, played mostly by juicers ([[Psycho Serum|drug-induced]] supermen), and by those few who can keep up. This includes Deadball (a form of Handball where the ball in question randomly extrudes spikes), the Murderthon (was once won by a [[Mighty Glacier]] juicer who flattened everyone else as they passed), and Juicer Football. Juicer characters can actually take "deadball" as a weapon skill, and buy ''exploding'' deadballs for weapons.
* Games Workshop's ''[[Blood Bowl]]'' is a [[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]-themed version of American football and rugby reimagined as a bloodsport that has replaced warfare in its alternate universe. Orcs, skaven and even undead field teams and are expected to try and maim their opponents to get ahead. Even sneaking a chainsaw onto the field isn't grounds for stopping the game.
* A theme deck from [[Magic: The Gathering|Magic The Gathering's]] ''Ravnica'' block was called ''Rakdos Bloodsports''.
== Video Games ==
* The computer game inspired by the movie ''[[Death Race 2000]]'', ''[[Carmageddon]]'', was even more so - and duly immediately ran afoul of [[Moral Guardians]].
** In some countries they got around censors by making the pedestrians into zombies, but in the third game specifically titled ''Carmageddon TDR 2000'', they headed it off by making zombie peds in the first place. Though cars get destroyed, no one is seen to die, and the way your own character survives auto-destruction implies your rivals may not be killed either, so it's no longer a Blood Sport.
* Speaking of cockfighting accusations, there's ''[[Pokémon]]'', which is (somewhat paradoxially) [[Lighter and Softer]], but with far more powerful animals in question. Don't bother bringing a chicken unless it can kick though a brick wall.
** The aforementioned chicken can jump buildings and control fire. It is considered [[Character Tiers|so-so]] at best, unless it can limber up as it fights. Then it's [[Took a Level
** The Pokemon canon does not portray Pokemon battling as especially risky; while by any human standards they would seem highly dangerous, the worst that happens is that they "faint", they can always be brought back to full health, and the subject of Pokemon death is in the anime usually never associated directly with battling, or at most only with trying to battle rampaging legendary creatures. A lot of Pokemon [[Fan Fiction]], on the other hand, loves to take a somewhat more cynical approach to the battling aspect.
* Another of the tamer uses of this trope, being from [[Nintendo]]: ''[[F-Zero]]'', a supersonic racing game where one false move can send you hurtling off a track suspended several kilometers above the ground. It looks like the [[Truth in Television|real life]] Formula 1... however, the Formula 1 has many safety features in its regulations - such as chicanes in the tracks, tyre walls at every corner, and engine size limits, all of them aimed at keeping active (driver skills) and passive (crumple zones) safety [[Stealth Pun|caught up]] with the vehicles' speeds - while the F-Zero is technically ''anything goes''.
Line 145:
* The ''[[Unreal Tournament]]'' series features full-on gladiatorial combat with [[BFG]]s.
** Well, until ''[[Unreal Tournament 3|Unreal Tournament III]]'', whose central conceit is that the Respawner technology used in these tournaments has been back-adapted to conventional warfare... with limitations and operation that are inexplicably similar to the contests of more traditional ''[[Unreal Tournament]]'' games. [[Fridge Logic|It doesn't make sense]], but it's [[Rule of Cool|an interesting idea]] and is an excuse to include a plotline ''not'' revolving around the tournaments, so it works anyway.
* On the far end of the spectrum, however, we have ''[[Mutant League Football]]''. Players included [[Fantasy Kitchen Sink|trolls, skeletons, aliens, and robots]], fields were littered with [[Death Course|landmines, pits, and other booby traps]], each team had a number of "audibles" representing tricks and gadgets that could be used once per half (like giving a player a [[Jet Pack]], [[Stuff Blowing Up|hand grenades]], or [[Fartillery|lethal flatulence]], or [[Shmuck Bait|rigging the ball to explode and then fumbling it]]), players would occasionally be killed from taking too much abuse on the field, and you could occasionally bribe the ref to call bogus penalties on your opponent for things like "whining" or "nose-picking". Of course, your opponent could then kill the ref and only take a five-yard penalty. There was also ''Mutant League Hockey'', which was pretty much the same thing with a different sport.
** And the animated series inspired by them, ''[[Mutant League]]''.
* In ''[[Monday Night Combat]]'', the entire game is one big blood sport in which all the human players are clones. You get extra points for certain types of kills, from a sniper rifle headshot to attaching an airstrike beacon to the opponent's head.
Line 190:
== Web Original ==
* ''[[Associated Space]]'' has the planet of New Tau Ceti, where a religious cult believes that only humans can sin, so the members put on pelts and pretend to be sheep. Of course, they still sin from time to time, so who to blame? The Shepherd, of course. So passing travelers are abducted, given shepherd's crooks, told they are shepherds...and forced to fight a genetically-engineered super-wolf in an arena. If they fight well enough, they have defeated sin, and may depart in peace. If not, well, they are a blood sacrifice to atone for sin.
== Western Animation ==
* In ''[[Thundercats 2011]]'' Thundera's [[Gladiator Games]] in their [[The Thunderdome|Thunderdome]]: A racing [[Chase Fight]] between two [[Catfolk|Cat]] competitors climbing, swinging, jumping and running up a giant tree to to ring a bell at its top, where violent kicking and punching in order to knock a competitor out of the tree are entirely acceptable methods of getting ahead.
* ''[[Samurai Jack]]'' winds up in two of these during the show's run. A [[The Thunderdome|Thunderdome]] after being captured and forced to compete {{spoiler|which he single-handily manages to shut down after the area's warriors prove no match for him.}} and an underground creature fight ring after being turned into a chicken and captured by a greedy Italian man.
* ''[[Bionicle]]: The Legend Reborn'', is very heavy with this. The glatorians fight in the various arenas to solve disputes instead of out and out war. But it ends up being more of an aversion, as matches are heavily regulated to avoid serious injury.
== Real Life ==
* [[The Other Wiki]] article on the term 'bloodsport' primarily focuses on human-instigated fights between animals, which is much closer to and occasionally even more extreme than fiction's idea of ''human'' bloodsport. Sports and pastimes that are lethal to humans tend to receive their own articles with different terms.
* The [[Forced Prize Fight|gladiator fights]] in [[Older Than Feudalism|ancient Rome]]. However, the number of gladiators who were actually killed in such fights was much, much lower in [[Reality Is Unrealistic|reality than in fiction]]. Though the grand majority of gladiators did die in the ring eventually, they were expected to have fought over a dozen times beforehand, even if they lost every time. There could be months of recuperation periods between the matches, as well.
** Of course there's a difference between Gladiators, who were well trained and expensive slaves who earn more if they live longer, and prisoners. Prisoners were given some form of weapon and then given to wild beasts to fight.
* Though this example technically isn't a man-to-man fight, bullfighting is definitely a bloodsport. Granted, the fatality rate of the bulls is statistically much higher than that of the ''matadores'' (the full title is ''matador de los toros'', or "bull-killer") but the threat of being gored by the horns is still there.
** The bull always dies; even if the matador fails to kill it, the bull is led out of the ring and slaughtered. This is because a bull that was allowed to fight more than once would mangle every matador that faced it; fighting bulls learn quickly. There are some illegal bullfights where amateur, inexperienced, or hard-luck matadors fight bulls that, in violation of the law, were not killed after being in a bullfight. These tend to end bloodily for the matadors.
Line 227:
* The Irish sport of [[wikipedia:Hurling|Hurling]] ''seems'' like a setup for a blood sport: 15 men on a side, each one wielding a 3-foot-long iron-shod ash hurley (it needs to be iron-shod, otherwise you risk it splitting when you hit the ball), batting a small cork ball at each other at over 90 miles an hour. Face-protecting helmets only became mandatory in 2010. Yet it is fairly civilised.
* [http://io9.com/5884309/ultimate-tazer-ball-is-the-shocking-sport-of-the-future Ultimate tazer ball].
* Bull riding, a sport that requires trying to stay on a bull for eight seconds, then trying to not get trampled after falling. Injury and death rates are higher than any other modern sport. Helmets were adapted by some riders in the 2000's, but they could sometimes be worse if a hoof got hooked in one of the holes. A purpose-built helmet was finally designed in 2011.
* Jousting is potentially deadlier than ''any'' of the above, and was responsible for the deaths of many, many nobles and the occasional unlucky king.
Line 234:
[[Category:We Will Use An Index In The Future]]
[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]
[[Category:
| |||