Windmill Crusader: Difference between revisions

 

== Anime ==

* ''[[Ranma One Half]]'': Tatewaki Kuno carries elements in this, mainly when he attacks Ranma, believing that he has enslaved Akane and the [[Girlish Pigtails|'Pig-Tailed Girl']] First problem with this is that Ranma and the 'Pig-Tailed Girl' are in fact the same person.

* ''[[Working]]'': Inami was taught from a young age by her father that males would all {{spoiler|try to rape her}} (the 'windmill'). By the time the story rolls around, she has a severe fear of men because of this {{spoiler|including said father. When she falls in love, she's trying to get rid of the training, but it's been so deeply engrained in her psyche that, even being able to see the 'windmill' for what it really is, isn't enough to stop the crusade.}}

* The utterly insane and [[Obliviously Evil]] inquisitor Mozgus in [[Berserk]]. His list of activities include: self-mortification by slamming his body into the ground thousands of times a day during prayer, using his sacred book to bash the brains of any "heretic" he comes across (in addition to bludeoning them on breaking wheels), and torturing the rebellions of the poor and starving population (including a young mother) - all under the desire to make those he considers sinful (which means everyone) to repent (by torture) so that their souls will be saved.

 

== Comic Books ==

 

== Film ==

* In ''[[A Beautiful Mind]]'', the protagonist is the [[Real Life]] Nobel Prize winner John Nash, hired by the US government in their struggle against terrorism. What neither Nash nor his closest superiors know {{spoiler|is that Nash is not only brilliant but also a paranoid schizophrenic who takes orders from two kinds of US officials: The real and the imaginary. The later “branch of the government” takes him on a quest that only keep getting weirder as the (imaginary) terrorists get closer to their nefarious goal of planting nukes in American cities.}}

* One minor character in ''[[Terminator|Terminator 2]]'' and ''Terminator 3'' is a psychiatrist who is so convinced that Sarah Connor is a [[Windmill Crusader]] that he becomes a [[Windmill Crusader]] himself. The time-travelling robots are really [[No Mere Windmill]], but in his refusal to believe this reality he clings on to a [[Windmill Political]] about hallucinations.

* ''[[Where Eagles Dare]]'': Played with/inverted; all of the team are sent in to the castle to rescue the general, but only Smith and Mary are aware that the whole setup is a complete fabrication, and most of the rest of the team are the bad guys.

* A reference to the [[Trope Namer]], the ''[[Star Wars]]'' comics from Marvel had a minor hero named Don-Wan Kihotay.

* ''[[God Bless America]]'': Frank, who seem to believe that he's actually doing something worthwhile. Unlike Roxy, he seem rather naive - not unlike the retarded television kid he keeps identifying with and feeling sorry for for all the wrong reasons.

* In ''[[Bolt]],'' the title character initially believes that the [[Show Within a Show|TV show he stars in]] is real and that his owner has been abducted by its [[Mad Scientist]] villain ([[Right-Hand-Cat|whose minions]] [[Cats Are Mean|are cats]], naturally). In reality the movie has [[No Antagonist|no real villain]] at all.

 

== Literature ==

* In the YA novel ''The King Of Dragons'', the protagonist's father is this. His severe PTSD from military service causes him to believe that terrible things will happen if he and his son are found by the authorities, so he gives him Survival [[Training From Hell]]. At the end of the book, he is recovering, and tells his son "I mistook molehills for mountains, but I taught you how to climb mountains."

* In the ''Ace Diamond'' novels, a cab driver suffers a nervous breakdown when his wife destroys his pulp collection and he starts to think he his pulp PI named Ace Diamond and that all fictional Private Investigators are real and friends of his.

== Live Action TV ==

 

* An episode of ''[[Smallville]]'' has a similar premise, with Clark being given a hallucination in which he is a mental patient who only thinks he is a super-powered alien. Specifically, in an inversion of an incident in the pilot, he learns that Lex lost both his legs in a car accident after Clark jumped out in front of him insisting he was saving him.

* In ''Inside Scoop'' they try to pin society's problems on [[A Sinister Clue|left-handed people]], and propose that we should "ban left marriage". (It's a parody of [[Heteronormative Crusader|homophobes]], of course.)

== Tabletop Games ==

 

** The "Wobblies" society also fall under this. At first, every Troubleshooter sent to investigate this potentially dangerous group reported that they couldn't find anything at all (since the Wobblies ''didn't exist'') and were summarily executed for laziness, incompetence and/or collaborating with the Wobblies. Eventually the Troubleshooters had to found the society themselves just to have something to report on.

 

 

* ''[[Dragon Age Origins]]'': [[Smug Snake|Loghain]] believes that the [[Legions of Hell|Darkspawn]] are not a threat, but the neighboring country of Orlais (who occupied Fereldan for much of his life, until he and King Maric drove them out for good) [[I Did What I Had to Do|are]] [[Utopia Justifies the Means|still]] [[Knight Templar|the]] [[Lawful Stupid|primary]] [[Windmill Political|concern]] [[Jumping Off the Slippery Slope|for the]] [[Moral Event Horizon|defense]] [[My Country, Right or Wrong|of the country.]] Interestingly, he considers the Grey Wardens themselves to be dangerous Windmill Crusaders who might weaken the nation's defense against Orlaisian invasion, though [[No Mere Windmill|the Darkspawn threat is quite real]].

** [[Word of God]] and notes found in the "Return To Ostagar" DLC confirm that yes, {{spoiler|Cailan was planning on leaving his wife- Loghain's daughter- for the queen of Orlais}} and yes, {{spoiler|Loghain found out about it, which factored into his decision to betray Cailan}}. Loghain's biggest error of judgement is that, as Flemeth puts it, "he believes the Darkspawn are merely another army that can be out-manoeuvred".

* Maximillion of Northshire, a quest giver in [[World of Warcraft]]'s Un'goro Crater, will take the player's character on a long quest to defeat the [[Dinosaurs Are Dragons|"evil dragons"]] in the area, rescue the "purse" of a "fair maiden"<ref> a [[Dude Looks Like a Lady|male Blood Elf]] who dropped a box of unknown contents</ref> from the hot spring, a second fair maiden from a high place<ref> '''by throwing her off a cliff'''</ref>, and rescued a third maiden from a "foul beast."<ref> by killing her parrot companion</ref> Finally, he takes you to something that is actually dangerous: kill an Azeroth-equivalent [[Tyrannosaurus Rex]]....by running away from it while throwing his armor at it. At the end, he's convinced he's truly done good. Also notable is that one of the rewards for his final quest is a trinket called a Toy Windmill.

== Web Comics ==

 

 

== Western Animation ==

 

 

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