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Terrorists Without a Cause: Difference between revisions
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In addition, these may be confused with terrorist groups that are [[Silly Reason for War|just plain silly]]. A real life example is Comité Régional d'Action Viticole, an organization made up of French wine growers who don't like foreign competition.
{{examples
== [[Anime]] ==
* ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]'' engages in some [[Playing With a Trope]] in the Teddy Bomber episode. TB ''has'' a reason that's very important to him for bombing tall buildings, and he keeps trying to explain it, but every last time he tries he's [[The Un
** He does finally get to reveal it at the end of the episode, and despite being a [[Mad Bomber]], actually comes off as somewhat sympathetic. The whole episode works better when you know he's very obviously inspired (in looks, MO, and philosophy) by Ted "Teddy Bear" Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who actually had very well thought-out reasons for his actions. TB in Cowboy Bebop may have had a similar cause but he was never able to explain it past a fleeting generality.
* ''Why'' does Millennium want to fight Alucard and destroy England in ''[[Hellsing]]''? Revenge for being defeated by the Allies during [[World War II]]? Nope. Do they want to [[Take Over the World]] and have it ruled by vampires? Nuh-uh. Why then? The Major not only admits that "[Millennium's] purpose is the ''total absence'' of purpose," he openly states to his mooks his main drive for doing what he does: "Gentlemen, [[Blood Knight|I like war]]."
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** Debateable as Ali does have a cause: his pocketbook. He was paid to create a child army, so he did it, using whatever methods worked and had a lot of fun in the process. [[Psycho for Hire]] yes. Terrorist Without A Cause, maybe not.
** He makes it pretty clear that he does what he does simply because he enjoys war. He's shown killing people even when it brings no real advantage to him, just [[For the Evulz]]. He's making money while at it, but it's pretty clear that he'd never retire, no matter how much he'd make.
* ''[[Black Lagoon]]'' actually gives this trope [[Deconstructed Trope|something of a serious treatment]] with Masahiro Takenaka, a villain in one of the arcs who's an ex-member of the Japanese Red Army. Having [[Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids|long since outgrown any notion that he'll ever get to incite a worldwide revolution through his actions]], Takenaka keeps fighting as part of terrorist organizations that have absolutely nothing to do with his original goals because being an enemy of the state is the only thing he finds meaning in doing. What with the series' usage of [[Black and Grey Morality]], he is [[Sympathy for The Devil|actually presented sympathetically for it]].
* [[Mad Artist|Deidara]] of [[Naruto]] thinks of explosions as fine art and wanted to share his art with everyone. Because indiscriminately blowing up people and ''villages'' is not acceptable behavior for a nation at peace, he went rogue and worked for various anti-government factions even before Akatsuki recruited him. Pein's own reasoning on why he became this is "Just Because."
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*** In the book after the IRA in [[Real Life]] murdered Lord Louis Mountbatten, the resulting backlash was so great that the IRA decided to put the royal family off limits. The public outcry against harming a member of the royal family would not help the IRA.
** [[Bill Bailey]] noted this, referring to them as "not the Real IRA, not the Continuity IRA, but only-two-of-them-and-neither-of-them-knows-who-the-other-one-is-IRA".
* [[Older Than They Think|Predating]] the ''[[Die Hard (Film)|Die Hard]]'' example, in Eric Ambler's novel ''The Light of Day'' (filmed as ''Topkapi''), the Turkish [[Secret Police]] believes a group of individuals to be terrorists, since they captured the [[Anti
* Joe Seluchi in ''[[Airplane!]] II: The Sequel''. He tries to blow up the flight so his family can get his flight insurance money.
** Which a second-degree [[Truth in Television]], incidentally, since he was a parody of a character in the original ''Airport'' movie/book, who was based on a real guy who blew himself and an airliner to bits so his mother would get the insurance money.
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* [[Meg Cabot]]'s ''American Girl'' begins with a botched presidential assassination, but deliberately avoids political commentary in favor of examining the life of the bystander who thwarted the attack. The solution? The assassin was obsessed with a supermodel, and convinced himself that killing the president would impress her.
** Something like that [[Ronald Reagan|actually]] [[Jodie Foster|happened]], you know.
* Pretty much inverted in ''[[Stationery Voyagers]]'', where ''everyone'' has an agenda and the stories see no problem at all with incorporating [[The War On Straw|scantily-clad analogues of real groups]]. The closest thing to "no cause" is the Yehtzig Pirate League, and their goal is [[A God Am I|to have Astrabolo overthrow God himself]]. The Drismabons come close, wanting the eternal damnation of the entire universe ''[[For the Evulz|just because]]''. The Muhmmaldian terrorists, however, are blatant knock-offs of real-life groups like Hamas. The Crooked Rainbow, of course, are ''gay'' terrorists. Pretty much every bad guy faction on Mantith is guaranteed to be a strawman (though how "straw" it is [[Ripped
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* ''D20 Modern'' includes one of these in a supplement -- the group causes destruction, death, and chaos for its own sake as part of a bizarre, paranoid, pseudo-religious doctrine.
* The PURGE secret society in ''[[Paranoia]]'' has no common motive beyond overthrowing The Computer.
* [[Mage: The Ascension (Tabletop Game)|Mage: The Ascension]] has the Umbral Underground, whose only goals are causing chaos and recruiting [[Power Born of Madness|more]] [[Reality Warper|Marauders]]. Unusually for this trope, they're [[Obliviously Evil]] [[Anti
** The Chaioth Ha-Quadesh is basically the Umbral Underground's [[Evil Counterpart|Eviler Counterpart]]. It's a genocidal group that includes [[Knight Templar]] crusaders and jihadists, a Chinese gang that thinks it's [[After the End]], and a group of guys who think they're in a virtual reality FPS and [[Omnicidal Maniac|act accordingly.]]
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* The Heaven Smiles in ''[[Killer 7]]'' are, as the game goes on, manipulated to various ends, but their original purpose is, to quote the game, "terrorism for the sole purpose of causing terror". Kun Lan, their creator, is a [[Hidden Agenda Villain]] who (as the game is a [[Mind Screw]]) never ''quite'' reveals what that agenda is.
* The [[Mass Effect]] DLC module Bring Down the Sky averts this by giving the Batarians a very [[Disproportionate Retribution]] sort of reason for their terrorist attack. Given how much of an [[Always Chaotic Evil]] culture the Batarians are portrayed as having and just how psychotic [[Complete Monster|Balak]] is, it actually makes a disturbing amount of sense.
* Quite a few video game and anime villains are [[Nietzsche Wannabe|Nietzsche Wannabes]] that are dedicated to destroying the old order. However, their New Order is neither Social Darwinism, nor Fascism, and not even [[Might Makes Right]] - it's just a vaguely defined "make humanity stronger through fighting" idea. Oddly enough, not only do the villains themselves consider it a comprehensive socio-political ideology, but so do the heroes, who often act as though the villains are just [[Well
** Well, it's true that major conflicts have a large number of good side effects. It's just that the bad main effects usually far outweigh them.
* The Order from ''[[Freelancer]]'' at first seems to be a bunch of terrorists without a cause. That is, until you find out their cause is {{spoiler|to defend the Sirius system from being taken by alien parasites. So you discover they were the good guys all along and therefore you join them.}}.
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* ''[[Captain Planet]]'' has this kind of terrorist. They hijack an oil ship and crash it into a beach [[For the Evulz|just to pollute Mother Nature]] [[You Fail Economics Forever|when they'd be better off selling the bloody oil.]]
** The Eco-Villains did have bizarre and psychotic reasons for doing what they did, however insane they seem to normal people. Three of them (Looten Plunder, Sly Sludge and Hoggish Greedly) were just greedy international corporate raiders, especially Greedly and Plunder. All they wanted was money, making them slightly better than your average [[Corrupt Corporate Executive|Gordon Gecko-like corporate nutjob]]. They're pretty much the personification of rampant capitalism, with Greedly spiking into the realm of what the faux-intellectual call "anarcho-capitalism", that is, literally capitalism without boundries, either moral or ethical (or ''logical'' for that matter).
** Verminous Skumm and Duke Nukem had reasonably clear motives as well. The former was out to destroy humanity, and the latter was a walking nuclear battery that needed to spread radioactivity so that he could feed and survive (this is severely ironic because Nukem could have been an eco-hero if he had just applied his radiation-absorbing powers to existing nuclear waste, instead of trying to cause meltdowns at nuclear plants). Of the recurring villains, only Dr. Blight and Zarm were really wayward, pointless chaotic evil. Dr. Blight claims to do stuff [[For Science!]] or for profit or both, and Zarm at least had the excuse of literally being the [[God of Evil]].
*** According to [[Word of God]], it was quite deliberate for the bad guys to be more about "looting and polluting" than logic would encourage; they were concerned if they made the villains believable, the kids of real-life loggers and such might become convinced that their parents were straight-up evil.
* ''[[G.I. Joe]]'' has terrorists ''with'' a cause: Cobra. However, that cause is ''money''.
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** Terrorism has been defined at least once as "ideologically driven organized crime". That would make "terrorists" whose cause is money, plain ol' criminals...
*** Interestingly, [[Word of God]] has talked about a Nietzsche figure for the Cobra organization, a spiritual leader figure who made the original doctrine for the Cobra organization, based on an amoral (if honorable) system of [[Right Makes Might]], that Cobra Commander perverted Hitler-style. [[Executive Meddling]] prevented the character from ever appearing in-show.
**** The comics show the Cobra Commander seems to think he's making the world a better place as it shows Cobra is a faction that accepts anyone who was disenfranchised or "wrongfully" exiled by their native country which stemmed from the disillusioned fact that the world is owned by Illuminati type groups which he deemed as snakes and wanted to be the head snake . Mainly because of the aftereffects of the [[Vietnam War]] and how the [[American Dream]] was dead in his eyes when his brother was put the chopping block when [[Start of Darkness|after one of the]] [[Shell
*** During the series' Dork Age, they decided that Cobra Commander wore a mask because he was a snake-man, leading the organization as part of Cobra-La, an ancient cult worshiping serpent-gods from beyond.
* There are some terrorists that the ''[[Gargoyles (Animation)|Gargoyles]]'' stop at the very beginning of one episode. They claim to have a cause, and maybe they do, but since they're such minor characters we never find out what it is.
** [[Word of God]] has it that their cause would (will?) be revealed... someday...
* In the pilot episode of ''[[Superman:
* The Dark Kat of ''[[Swat Kats (Animation)|Swat Kats]]'' really seems to apply here, simply wanting to destroy the city for the sake of allowing a criminal wasteland to take its place.
* ''[[Transformers Prime]]'' has [[Fun With Acronyms|MECH]], a cyberterrorist group whose goals aren't very clearly stated.
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