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The Falklands War (view source)

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{{quote|'''The Empire Strikes Back'''|''Newsweek'' headline (19 April 1982), after declaration of war.}}
 
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]].
 
The [[Banana Republic|Argentine military junta]] launched an invasion of the islands it called the Malvinas, thinking that the British military wouldn't be able to respond effectively (if they'd left it a year later, they wouldn't have been able to). [[Margaret Thatcher]] dispatched a Royal Navy task force, which arrived in May.
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* [[Glorious Leader]]: Galtieri and the rest of the Argentine Junta are casebook examples. [[Iron Lady|Maggie Thatcher]] also displayed at least some shades of it.
* [[Heroic BSOD]]: A lot of veterans on both sides committed suicide after the war was over. More British soldiers killed themselves after the war than [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1758301.stm died during the war].
* [[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.
* [[Honor Before Reason]]: It was about the conflicting honor of the respective states. The Falklands don't have any material benefits and if there were the populations of the respective countries, as opposed to the governments would not have been particularly more supportive.
* [[HSQ]]: Pretty damn high despite the relatively moderate body count.
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* [[Weapons Kitchen Sink]]/[[Selective Historical Armoury]]: Noticeable with some of the standard issue firearms used in the war. While most of the small arms were reasonably contemporary models (e. g. the FN FALs and the various grenade and rocket launchers), the troops were still using some trusty [[World War Two]] era arms as well: The Brits used Sterling SMGs for close combat and updated Lee-Enfield bolt-action rifles for sniping duty, while the Argentines had the American M3 "Grease Gun" SMGs and German WWII and ''[[Break Out the Museum Piece|WWI]]'' Mauser rifles as equivalents. In the case of the Argentines, it was more out of necessity than anything else, since their army equipment was generally more outdated than the British one (though, surprisingly, the Argentine soldiers had more effective night vision devices).
* [[Ye Goode Olde Days]]/[[Anachronism Stew]]: Admittedly for some noncombatants it felt a bit like deja vu as this seemed like something out of the days of [[Rudyard Kipling]] when "[[War Is Glorious|War Was Glorious]]" and the sun never set on [[The British Empire]]. OK, war is only glorious to those who don't have to crawl in the mud, not even in the days of [[Rudyard Kipling]]. But it looks different in the news.
* [[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.
 
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== Comics ==
* ''[[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.
 
 
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== Music ==
* 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.
 
 
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== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[Harpoon (Tabletop Gamegame)|Harpoon]]'' has a entire book for its fourth edition on scenarios related to the war, entitled ''South Atlantic War''.
 
 
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== Western Animation ==
* Referenced in ''[[The Simpsons (Animationanimation)|The Simpsons]]'':
** In one episode, Krusty takes a night off filming his show and sticks on a re-run, figuring that no one will notice; unfortunately for him, it happens to be the edition that was playing the night the Falklands War was declared, and he interrupted the show to deliver an [[Author Filibuster]] about it.
** The second [[Treehouse of Horror]] episode has a segment in which Lisa uses a wish to bring peace to the world, and the resulting montage includes a conversation between the British and Argentine ambassadors at the UN:
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