Sobriquet: Difference between revisions
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== [[Real Life]] ==
=== Military, politics etc. ===
* Manfred von Richtofen, the [[Red Baron]] - famous enough that his sobriquet was the former Trope Namer. Those who actually knew the man would recount how approachable he was to those in the squadron he led, commenting that he was quite friendly and would joke around with his fellow pilots. Still, it says a lot that his sworn enemies gave the man a burial with full military honors, [[Worthy Opponent|out of sheer respect for his prowess and valor as a fellow Sky Warrior]]. It is even rumored that tears were shed at the funeral by those who lost friends to his red triplane's gunfire. The fact that Richtofen was only in his early twenties during his career and airplane technology was relatively new and yet he still managed to shoot down ''80 freaking planes'' (a pilot is considered a "Flying Ace" if he shoots down ''five'' or more in his career), it's no surprise why everyone in the war respected the guy. Which also makes his death somewhat ironic - he wasn't killed by an enemy pilot, but by a lucky shot from a machine gunner on the ground (after being chased down there by an enemy pilot; while the circumstances are sketchy, the lethal rounds were confirmed to be infantry-grade). He managed to make a controlled landing right before he bled out.
** Richthofen had other nicknames, such as the Red Knight (mostly by the British) and “Le Diable Rouge” (by the French, “the Red Devil”). In his own journals, he referred to himself as “der rote Kampfflieger” (“the red fighter pilot”), referring to the color of his aircraft.
* Another German example: Erwin "The Desert Fox" Rommel. In fact this trope could just as easily have been called The Desert Fox, [[Magnificent Bastard|if Rommel didn't already have a trope named after him.]] Rommel's son Manfred said that he was glad of the compliment because he knew the British had learned to appreciate foxes from hunting them. But he would have liked lion even more then fox.
* Vlad Dracula was also known as Vlad Tepes, Tepes meaning "[[The Butcher|Impaler]]" cause, [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|well, that is what he did]]. The Turks were very frightened of him, [[Dead Guy on Display|and mounted his head on the walls of Istanbul, to assure people that he was really dead.]] Consider the fact this man basically saw the Turks invading his land, turned to the Turkish prisoners and said 'Well, they aren't doing anything', and created a forest of roughly 30,000 impaled Turkish soldiers.
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