The Spartan Way: Difference between revisions

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== [[Film]] ==

* ''[[Starship Troopers (film)|Starship Troopers]]''. Sergeant Zim even throws a knife into Ace's hand for griping.

** But then, in a universe where one can shrug off alien pincers through the shoulder blades, a mere knife to the hand probably counts barely above a slap.

* The commandos in the film ''[[Soldier]]'' are raised brutally from birth and treated brutally thereafter, only to be replaced by a new generation of genetically engineered soldiers.

* The movie ''Naked Weapon'' features a wide variety of pubescent girls being kidnapped from around the world and sent to a tropical island. After immediately killing anybody who says 'Yes, I wanna go home!', they spend the next six years in a nonstop boot camp teaching the girls everything there is to know about firearms, human anatomy, unarmed combat, and social interaction, honing them into the world's finest assassins. As a penultimate final exam, they are assembled in their barracks and told that they have two minutes to kill half their number or they will all die. In the actual final exam, they are forced to compete in a gladiator-style tournament until only one remains. However, their "performance" is so great that the Madam allows three to survive instead. They get drugged and raped on their graduation, just to drive home that their bodies are not their own.

* In [[The Bourne Series]], it's implied that the CIA assassins in the Treadstone and Blackbriar programs are subjected to a brutal training and brainwashing regimen in order to condition them to be the perfect assassins.

* Exaggerated to parody during the tour of Royalton Industries in the ''[[Speed Racer]]'' movie: Royalton racers need to be able to eat noodles with chopsticks on a centrifuge, pass an eye exam on a vibrating chair, and take a jet turbine's worth of freezing air to the ''face''.

* Coast Guard rescue swimmers as taught by Kevin Costner in ''The Guardian."

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{{quote|"The Sardukar was forced to use the jet engines of their troop transporters as flamethrowers. That, my dear Baron, is an act of desperation!"}}

** The Ginaz Academy, which trains the best warriors in the Empire. It's a grueling eight-year program, and roughly one-third of all students do not survive training. Another third simply wash out, and the final third join the ranks of the Ginaz Swordmasters.

* The Unsullied in George R. R. Martin's ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'' are trained from birth, not only to be superior warriors, but also to be unswervingly loyal. This training involves raising a puppy from birth as their only friend, and then ''personally strangling it'' to prove they can follow orders. They're also said to be able to stand until they collapse of starvation and are fed a mixture that dulls and eventually eliminates their sense of pain. To demonstrate this, a slaver ''hacks the nipple'' off one of the Unsullied, who doesn't even flinch.

** That one is drawn from propaganda about SS officer candidate school in Nazi Germany requiring cadets to do the same thing. ''Probably'' propaganda.

** Unsullied training actually has worse aspects, including having no permanent name and having to kill an infant.

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{{quote|He turned to Hauptfeldwebel Hoffman. "Two hours special drill in the river. Anyone who kills a comrade gets three weeks leave. Every tenth cartridge and every twentieth grenade will be live. I want to see at least one broken arm. Otherwise, four hours extra drill."

Then began one of Mike's usual exercises. We hated him because of them, but they made us hard and inhuman. If you are to be a good soldier, you have to be able to hate. You have to kill a man as if he were a louse. }}

* In the ''[[Wolf Breed]]'' series, which is an ''[[Elfen Lied]]'' [[Expy]], [[The Teutonic Knights]] do this to a bunch of werewolf children in an attempt to create [[Super Soldier|Super Soldiers.]] Results were...mixed.

* The Blood Lords, from [[John Ringo]]'s ''[[Council War]]'' series. Somewhat of a necessity given that, just a few months prior to the titular conflict kicking off, the people in it had been members of a post-scarcity survivor. They wouldn't have stood a chance against the numerically superior opposition otherwise.

* The war camp run by the Bloodletter in [[Black Dagger Brotherhood]] qualifies for this trope. And unlike the real Spartans, who started training at age seven, his trainees started at age three. Made worse by the fact that winners of sparring bouts were encouraged to rape the losers. Alumni of this camp include Darius and Vishous.

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== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* The training of [[Super Soldier|Space Marines]] in the ''[[Warhammer 40000|Warhammer 40K]]'' universe, as exemplified by the page quote, takes this trope to the point of parody. Given that your average space marine chapter contains about 1,000 space marines, one can do the math on those who died along the way to make them rather easily. However, this is overall ''practical'' for the Imperium, as manpower is the one resource the Imperium has more of than it needs, and throwing away a couple thousand people to get half a dozen new Space Marines is both economical and practical.

** A good example would be the recruitment procedures of the Blood Angels Chapter: The barely post-pubescent aspirants must first cross the barren desert of their monster-inhabited world with only primitive tools before ascending a mountain. At the peak, they then take part in a massive [[Gladiator Games|gladiatorial tournament]] to the death. When fifty recruits remain, they are taken to the chapter's Fortress-Monastery and forced to meditate for three days without food or water, and if they fall asleep they are ''killed''. Note that there has been no rest period between the trials. After ''that'', they take a very powerful sedative that places them in a coma for one year, during which they are entombed in a massive golden sarcophagus that sustains them and initiates the physical and genetic changes required to become a Space Marine. A majority of the applicants will have their bodies reject the implants, killing them or mutating them beyond recognition, and still more will awaken and lie imprisoned in the tomb while their bodies painfully change for the rest of the year, often driving them insane. Then, their ''training'' begins.

** Did we mention this all happens on a planet so irradiated that they must wear bulky rad-suits that look like diving suits, and jump canyons with only a pair of crude mechanical wings? Life on Baal has left all these aspirants stunted and unhealthy, not to mention more than likely cancerous.

** Another reason they go crazy is due to them awaking inside a sealed coffin filled with blood (or at least a blood-like substance) and have to endure it for however long he has left in there. Think claustrophobia combined with being submerged in blood. Yikes.

** Note, that portion of the training will only yield about 10% of the chapter's members (the 10th Company's Scouts). To be promoted to full fledged Space Marine you have to endure a few more years of actual live combat. Even after that, the daily training is also brutal. Live fire is always used and you are expected to fight in every single possible condition, not to mention your daily lunch will consist of whatever you kill in the morning (which is fatally poisonous to normal humans due to where the Fortress-Monastaries are located).

** The Space Wolves' homeworld is deliberately kept in a primitive technological state, analogous to real-world viking culture. Inter-tribal warfare is encouraged. Those who demonstrate their bravery by valiantly dying in battle are recovered, healed, and inducted. That's right, ''death'' is a prerequisite for joining. Then begins the usual battery of physical tests, psychic examinations, extensive training, exposure to the elements, and combat against vicious monsters. The final exam is having the Space Wolf geneseed implant. As the Marine adapts to his new organs, they are engaged in a psychic struggle against their bestial inner nature. Those who fail transform into a canine abomination. Then they become Blood Claws, assault troops whose sole purpose is to charge the enemy in close combat and seize enough glory to be promoted.

** Also holds true for the Catachans. Their method of training, however, is quite simple: [[Death World|survive to adulthood on Catachan.]]

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** Grey Knights training, on the other hand, would make even him proud. Grey Knights basically have to go through all the things a regular Space Marine must, plus endure a nonstop gauntlet of 666 different physical, mental and spiritual tortures and other trials. The survival rate is rather slim, to put it mildly.

** ''[[The Last Chancers]]'' has training that could compare to the Space Marines, significant in that it's the only penal legion described to do it such. Colonel Schaeffer takes the best of the best from the worst of the worst (thousands upon thousands of military criminals who he thinks might be useful for whatever mission might be handed him) and this would, in any other setting already give you [[Surprisingly Elite Cannon Fodder]], but here he takes them through one hellish battlefield after another to separate the "elite" from the "fodder", and the survivors get to join him in undertaking really important suicide missions given by the Inquisition which any sane commander would have sent Death Watch or Grey Knights to do instead.

* This trope applies to the Black Guard of the [[Our Elves Are Better|Dark Elves]] in [[Warhammer Fantasy]]. They are taken from their mothers at birth so they don't form any attachment to their families, then as soon as they are old enough, they are forced to fight each other to the death so that only the strongest survive. Those who live are somewhat prone to [[Chronic Backstabbing Disorder|murdering one another]], this being [[Klingon Promotion|a recognised way of rising through the ranks]]. If they make it through two hundred years of service - and it is implied many don't - they can look forward to a high position at the Witch King's court, not that such a position [[Deadly Decadent Court|increases one's life expectancy]]. They're an interesting lot.

* The Clan Warriors in ''[[BattleTech]]'': eugenically selected, 'birthed' in artificial wombs, raised for their specific missions from childhood, then pitted against each other in live-fire conflicts to determine their fitness, and any who don't earn a "Bloodname" before the age of 35 are considered washed up.

** Of course, the "Common, low-born" MechWarriors of the Inner Sphere still keep winning in all the PC games made around the franchise. The downside to the Clan Warrior training: enemies that ''don't'' follow the Clan Warrior rules are a nightmare to deal with. (There's mention at one point of a group of Clan Warriors who challenged their enemies to individual duels... and were gunned down. Last words? "This isn't fair!")

** This is about the only way to explain the opening cinematic of the first [[Mech Commander]] game. Clanner that forgets that Spheroids are back-shooting, dogpiling [[Combat Pragmatist]] stravags, so lets himself get shot in the back not once but TWICE, and tunnels on the latest opponent to shoot at him.

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== [[Video Games]] ==

* ''[[System Shock]] 2'', which is [[Cyberpunk]] and therefore quite [[Justified Trope|justified]], has one option in the player's character creation being a survival course with a "21.2% mortality rate". This actually seems quite low, considering it takes place on [[wikipedia:Io (moon)#Volcanism|Io, the moon with 400 volcanoes]].

* Surprisingly, GDI's (the good guys') commando program in ''[[Command ~~and~~ Conquer]]: Tiberium Wars'', with a 22% fatality rate among the recruits and a 95% failure rate among the survivors.

* Surprisingly, GDI's (the good guys') commando program in ''[[Command & Conquer]]: Tiberium Wars'', with a 22% fatality rate among the recruits and a 95% failure rate among the survivors.

** To make matters even more ridiculous, the Brotherhood of Nod's commando program is ''even worse.''

** And then the AI sends them, one by one, to attack your base defenses. Seems like a bit of a waste, really.

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** Some of the exercises done to trainees during SERE school would be considered violations of the Geneva Conventions if done to enemy prisoners.

*** Which is somewhat understandable, since not everyone who might take them prisoner is going to respect the Geneva Convention.

*** Especially since many of the missions rely on the ability to plausibly claim that the people involved are not combatants from your country.

* Army Rangers. Trainees often die during training.

** Army Rangers may go on to complete Special Operations training and join Delta Force. Beyond that, it's all secret hush hush type stuff.

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* One of the Delta Force entrance exams consists of having to march through 40 kilometers of rugged country terrain in less than 10 hours, all the while carrying 40 pounds of gear. Sounds bad? Did we forget to mention that they give you the absolute bare minimum of navigational information to find the endpoint of the route? Hope you didn't miss a turn.

* The USAF's Combat Controllers. They have to maintain qualification as Air Traffic Controllers (which is probably the ''second'' most stressful job in the world, the first being ''soldier'').

** USAF Pararescue Training. They are the US military's Combat Search and Rescue specialists, and their pipeline is known as "Superman School".

** Should also mention the USAF's Special Operations Weather Technicians. All three Air Force Special Tactics operators are well-respected in the military community as badasses. Before they even begin their job training, ALL Special Tactics hopefuls complete BMT, then a six week Indoctrination course. Called "Indoc" it is the most grueling ordeal most trainees have ever been through--including such novel practices as performing calisthenics whie wearing diving masks. Filled with water. Indoc washes out a great deal of candidates due to the harsh training. And then it gets worse.

* The British SAS are generally considered extremely tough also. The final stage of their 4-week Selection training is known as "Endurance", a forty mile march across the [[wikipedia:Brecon Beacons|Brecon Beacons]], completed in less than twenty hours carrying more than fifty-five pounds of weight, plus water, food and rifle. They then get to proceed to the six weeks in the Malaysian jungle. Then the survival training, then the interrogation training...and after all that, they are effectively on probation for a year, with many being returned to their parent unit in that time as unsuitable.