War Is Hell: Difference between revisions

* ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]''. Every side has thousands of soldiers being maimed or massacred, and the soldiers that do survive in one piece spend most of the time when they're not actively fighting rampaging through the villages, stealing, murdering, and raping as they go. The nobility try to hold onto a [[War Is Glorious]] mindset at first, but lose it rapidly as they start to suffer consequences too, and it's gone entirely by the time the Tully family takes Jaime Lannister as a hostage.

* ''[[Catch-22]]''. War is inescapable and insane. You can be promoted without doing anything and you can be arrested for breaking curfew while letting a rapist go free because he is on furlough.

* ''[[Animorphs]]'' does this with teenagers fighting an [[Alien Invasion]].

* ''[[Romance of the Three Kingdoms]]'' while it had its epic war moments, was ultimately a tale of tragedy as three kingdoms vied for the control of China and ultimately none were victorious. In terms of the fates of the characters, Shu fell as [[Wide-Eyed Idealist]] Liu Bei soon became jaded, learning virtue is not enough to bring the people together. For Wu, the Sun dynasty's fall heralded a new tyrant who was so hated that the people did not resist and for Wei, Cao Pi realized that ambition worked both ways.

* ''[[Johnny Got His Gun]]''. About a soldier who is [[And I Must Scream|left deaf, blind, mute and without any limbs]] as a result of a war that he didn't even volunteer for. He learns to communicate by moving ever so slightly, and repeatedly asks to be killed.

* ''[[Bolo]]'' - In the late days of Case/Operation Ragnarok, even the eponymous [[Knight in Shining Armor]] sapient supertanks are falling to bloodlust and slaughtering the enemy's civilians. When the sole survivor Shiva reawakens, he is horrified by the atrocities that he himself had not been above committing under the pretense of [[Punch Clock Villain|following orders]].

* This is brought up in ''[[The Book Thief]]'', as a young German girl and her adopted family living in Germany during [[World War 2]] and aren't living [[Perpetual Poverty|in the best conditions.]] What was particularly [[Tear Jerker|heartbreaking]] was when {{spoiler|the street they were living in was accidentally bombed and everyone except the little girl died.}} It's quite harsh when you realize that it was the Allies who did that.

* Similarly and even more the case for being unfortunately [[Truth In Television]], ''[[The Winds of War and War and Remembrance]]'' does indeed regard war as horrific, but not without [[Screw the War, We're Partying|some]] [[Band of Brothers|compensations.]] By contrast the totally non-military behavior of Nazis who wear [[Bling of War]] but [[Miles Gloriosus|do nothing more belligerent]] than bully slaves around is far worse. Danger and hardship are shown from war. Concentration camps emphasize humiliation and helplessness as well. There is no question that the author thinks tyranny pushed to an extreme degree is even worse than war.

 

* ''[[Band of Brothers (TV series)|Band of Brothers]]'': you will cry the day you lose your friends. This one is contrasted with its main theme of [[True Companions|a circle of unbreakable friendships]].

* ''[[The Pacific]]'',<ref>[[Spiritual Successor]] to ''[[Band of Brothers (TV series)|Band of Brothers]]''</ref> is [[It Got Worse|worse]]. Made brutally clear by Eugune Sledge's father, who tries one last attempt to persuade his son from enlisting:

** "A Good Day" - the horror of being stuck in the middle of two warring armies.

** "To Helicon and back" - gunpowder is used for the first time in battle and the result is horrifying.

 

== Music ==

{{quote|{{spoiler|Leggett}}: Well, this looks familiar.}}

* ''[[Halo]]'' - While they were serious from the start, it wasn't until the third game it became clear that this is the main [[Aesop]]. Yes lovable main characters were killed in the first game, and the second game became more uglier about the situation, but that was out-shadowed by [[Do Not Do This Cool Thing|awesome playstyle, story, weapons and a badass player character]]. But by the time of third game, all of that were thrown right out of the window. ''Halo3'' was not afraid to show how shitty a [[Melee a Trois|three-sided war between Humanity, a galactic empire made of genocidal, fanatical aliens and a parasitic species of undead monsters]] [[Deconstruction|would be]]; [[Anyone Can Die|Anyone can (and will) die]], even main characters as {{spoiler|Sgt. Johnson, Miranda Keyes, 343 Guilty Spark, Prophet of Truth, etc}}, cities are burned to the ground, billions are killed, even the most [[Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain|Ineffectual Sympathetic]] [[Mooks]] become [[Took a Level in Badass|ferocious]], [[Taking You with Me|bloodthirsty]] [[Not-So-Harmless Villain|warriors]] after they had been through wars long enough, people suffers from psychological damages of the whole thing, and not just biological creatures but also supposedly unliving machines such as Cortana ({{spoiler|whose torture at the hands of Gravemind almost breaks her into a depressive [[Empty Shell]]}}), 343 Guilty Spark ({{spoiler|whose isolation for the last 100,000 years and status as the canon [[Scrappy]] becomes to much for him to handle and snaps into a dangerous, literally, killing machine}}), and Mendicant Bias ({{spoiler|whose 100,000 years of overwhelming guilt because of his treason against the Forerunners cause him to sacrifice himself to help Master Chief}}), and Master Chief, [[The Hero]] of the story, {{spoiler|ends up in no-ending space without any way to get back to Earth}}. Not to mention about that great civilization that was destroyed due to the 300 years war against the said undead monsters, which forced them to kill themselves in a massive sacrifice in a attempt [[Taking You with Me|to take their enemies with them]]—only it was [[All for Nothing]].

** And that goes without mentioning Halo Reach, all the other main games had the knowledge of the Halo rings as hope, or at the very least a game changer, not the same old stalling against an unstoppable more technologically advanced horde of intergalactic aliens who deem your entire people heretical. Halo Reach is that, each subsequent mission just makes it more and more clear that despite Reach being the most advanced colony and the one with the greatest military presence it will still repeat the same fate of its bretheren, and all you are doing is trying to save the most people you can/and or kill the most Covenant. The last two missions you do in a way find out about the rings, and you give it your all and sacrifice almost of Noble Team (meaningful name) to take it on the last transport leaving Reach. Yay you did it, all those missions, all those kills, all the obstacles passed by a hairline, now you get your long deserved reward right? Except somebody needs to fire the gun. You are left on Reach, with scattered unorganized resistance as its being glassed. And no matter how hard you fight, you will die. Halo Reach is game that shows that even if you give your all and be a good soldier hope is not guarranteed... Well for you :)

* While it never outright says it, [[Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45]] never flinches from the fact that combat was often short, terrifying and brutal.

* In ''[[Knights of the Old Republic|Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II]], it is shown that the war in the previous game has had absolutely devastating consequences for the Republic. Most of the playable characters, including the protagonist, are [[Shell-Shocked Veteran|Shell Shocked Veterans]] who have lost family, friends, limbs, and sense of self. Throughout the game you meet refugees, embittered ex-soldiers, and traverse planets that are still physically and culturally ravaged five years after the war's end while the galactic government collapses slowly.

* ''[[Eternal Darkness]]'' features a chapter set in a [[Creepy Cathedral]] used as a field hospital in Amiens, France, during the Battle of the Somme, with all the gruesome sights and sombre atmosphere that one might expect of such a setting. It is even implied that Pius and his acolytes manipulated events towards the war just so that there would be more death to harvest. Mind, given that this is a [[Cosmic Horror Story|Lovecraftian horror story]], there are far more horrific things than war in the cathedral...

 

== Web Comics ==

* ''[[Angels 2200]]'' has its entire plot built around this, with [[Face Heel Turn|very]] [[Break the Cutie|dire]] [[Anyone Can Die|consequences]].

* ''[[Subnormality]]'' has a few, but this one is [http://www.viruscomix.com/page541.html particularly poignant.]

 

== Web Original ==

* Works by Stuart Slade, such as ''[[The Big One]]'' and ''[[The Salvation War]]'', make a point of portraying exactly how horrible modern military weapons technology can be, mostly as a reaction to how underestimated or cavalierly such weapons often get treated in much fiction. It helps that the author is a professional military analyst, and he [[Shown Their Work|shows his work]] by refusing to shy away from excruciatingly detailing exactly what modern weapons—from the "lowly" assault rifle to weapons of mass destruction—can do to people. In [[The Salvation War]]: [http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=118769&highlight= Armageddon], for example, the forces of Hell learn first hand the horror of modern, mechanized total war. One of them even remarks that the battlefield they were fighting on was a human-made hell. Quite a rude awakening for the army in question, {{spoiler|especially as they were at bronze age levels of technology.}}

* In the sequel to ''The Salvation War'', ''Pantheocide'', we get "treated" to {{spoiler|the angelic army being hit with a nuclear initiation. The description of the results is chilling.}}

 

== Western Animation ==

** ''[[Exo Squad]]'' also wasn't shy at all, depicting people dying on all sides, civilians being starved, [[Offstage Villainy|indications of genocide]], [[Body Horror]], and many examples of [[Nightmare Fuel]], particularly later in the show.

* ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'' explores the prolonged effects of Imperialism, foreign occupation, and even genocide as much as it can while still being viewable for children. One episode has the commander of an Earth Kingdom fortress show our heroes an infirmary, and then mentions that those soldiers are the lucky ones, because they came ''back''. Everybody has their lives affected by the war: the main character is the last of his kind because every single one of his people were massacred a hundred years earlier, and two of his companions lost their mother to a raid. They also meet many people whose villages were burned to the ground, with most of them losing their families in the process. One even blows up a dam to try and clear out Fire Nation soldiers, knowing that the flood will kill innocent civilians as well. They even meet a woman who was taken from her village simply because she was a waterbender, who then spent years learning how to manipulate the blood in people's bodies and now [[He Who Fights Monsters|blindly seeks revenge]].

* ''[[Peace on Earth]]'', a very [[Anvilicious]] anti-war cartoon made just as World War II was beginning in Europe, is about a post-apocalyptic world where humans have killed themselves off through war and the world is populated by [[Ridiculously Cute Critter]]s. Features some [[Nightmare Fuel]]-inducing rotoscoped animation.

* ''[[Star Wars: The Clone Wars]]'' does this a lot to contrast itself to the first, Tartakosky series which was "[[War Is Glorious]]". {{spoiler|First shown in ''Rookies'' where a group of clones tries to retake an outpost...only two survive besides [[Mauve Shirt|Rex and Cody]]. Its really hammered in hard during the Kaminoian Invasion where 99, a defective Clone is killed. And finally in the latest Umbara Arc? Its so hellish (and the Jedi General is a [[Complete Monster]] since he was defecting), the Clones are ''tricked to killing each other''.}}

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Military and Warfare Tropes]]

[[Category:World War I]]

[[Category:Stock Aesops]]

[[Category:No Real Life Examples, Please]]