The Falklands War: Difference between revisions

{{tropeUseful Notes}}

The 1982 war between Argentina and the UK over a bunch of currently [[British Frozen Rocks Withwith Penguins and Landmines|British-owned islands in the South Atlantic]].

A useful and comprehensive website about the war can be found [http://www.naval-history.net/NAVAL1982FALKLANDS.htm hereat Naval-History.Net].<!-- Site name copied from the site's homepage; thus, the capitalization "Naval-History.Net" is correct. -->

* [[Useful Notes/Argentines With Armored Vehicles|Argentines With Armored Vehicles]]: Quite literally (see the [[Tank Goodness]] entry).

* [[Real Life/Cool Plane/Real Life|Cool Plane]]:

* [[Hoist Byby His Own Petard]]: The Argentine Junta sought to use the war as a rallying point to keep power and redirect popular discontent outwards. [[The Empire|And if they're lucky, maybe form an Empire doing so.]] The defeat and capitulation led the war to be used as a rallying point [[La Résistance|against the Junta]] and its' handling of it, almost directly leading to the Junta's overthrow.

* [[You Can't Thwart Stage One]]: [[Averted Trope|Averted.]] Out of at least Britain, [[Glorious Leader|Pinochet's]] [[Banana Republic|Chile]], and [[Team Switzerland|Uruguay]], the Argentine Junta chose the British as the stage one targets of their wider plans for expansion. [[Hoist Byby His Own Petard|Ooops.]] Played straighter by the successful occupation of the barely-defended islands and the surrender of the skeleton garrison.

* ''[[Bloom County (Comic Strip)|Bloom County]]'' did a plot-arc set on the islands during the war, with the resident penguins offering perplexed comments on the fighting. Opus' mother seemingly perished in the Falklands War. {{spoiler|However, she survived with amnesia and was taken by a cosmetics company.}} (Despite this, Opus was originally from Antarctica, not the Falklands.)

* Steve Bell's very left-wing [[British Newspapers|Guardian]] cartoon strip ''[[If (Comic Strip)|If...]]'' was born during the Falklands War and still runs today; its first and most enduring plot-arc is of the mutinous sailor Kipling who serves in the War and brings back a Falklands penguin, who returns to London with him and becomes the series' acid commentator on the idiocies and dogmatic lunacies of Thatcher's Britain and a consistently subversive comment on right-wing mentality and government in general.

* A story arc in the comic strip ''[[Doonesbury (Comic Strip)|Doonesbury]]'' featured the characters Duke and Honey attempting to run a charter boat down to the Falklands for people to watch the war.

* The [[Iron Maiden (Music)|Iron Maiden]] song "Como Estais Amigos" is an somber expression of solidarity with the Argentinian people (Maiden is, of course, British) and discusses the conflict.

* The war forms the backdrop for the [[Pink Floyd (Music)|Pink Floyd]] album, ''The Final Cut'', where the schoolteacher from [[The Wall]], a shellshocked [[World War Two]] veteran, watches young soldiers go off to fight in the Falklands for no reason. He expresses dismay that no one has learned from history and that England failed to fulfill the post-war promise to promote peace instead of fighting and bloodshed.

* The [[Sabaton (Music)|Sabaton]] song "Back In Control" is about the war from the perspective of the British military.

* ''[[Harpoon (Tabletop Gamegame)|Harpoon]]'' has a entire book for its fourth edition on scenarios related to the war, entitled ''South Atlantic War''.

* The enviroments (islands with a subarctic climate and overall atmosphere) and the [[The Eighties|time frame]] in which ''[[Operation Flashpoint]]'' takes place are inspired by various aspects of this war, even though the plot is quite different (a small-scale NATO and Soviet showdown threatening to erupt into [[World War Three]]). The game had several Falklands-themed [[Game Mod|Game Mods]] over the years, directly featuring both militaries and various battles of the war. If you own the Game of the Year edition of ''OFP'', you can grab the Falklands War total conversion [https://web.archive.org/web/20081231010130/http://ofp.gamepark.cz/index.php?showthis=10588 here] and [http://ofp.gamepark.cz/index.php?showthis=10694 here]{{Dead link}} and run it from a custom mod folder. Sadly, the [[Development Hell]] it had gone through prevented its creators from making a proper campaign, so you'll have to play one of the three available missions or make your own in the game's editor.

* Referenced in ''[[The Simpsons (Animationanimation)|The Simpsons]]'':

{{quote| "Eh, sorry about the Falklands, old boy."<br />