We Have Reserves/Playing With

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Basic Trope: General Bob doesn't care if his soldiers die, since he can easily replace them.

  • Straight: General Bob callously orders soldiers into certain death.
  • Exaggerated: General Bob is willing to depopulate his entire nation in order to win a single battle.
  • Justified: General Bob is uncaring about the deaths of him men because he is The Stoic.
    • General Bob's soldiers are Mecha-Mooks that can be replaced quickly and cheaply.
  • Inverted: General Bob cares so much about his soldiers that he would rather lose the war than see them killed.
  • Subverted: General Bob initially appears to not care when his soldiers die, but is later shown drowning his sorrows, suffering from Bad Dreams, or otherwise mourning the deaths of his men.
  • Double Subverted: ... but then it turns he was just pretending to mourn them so people would stop criticizing him for being too callous.
  • Parodied: General Bob sacrifices a million soldiers just to get himself a cup of coffee, and then sends a million more out because he doesn't have any cream for his coffee.
  • Deconstructed: General Bob's willingness to let his army take massive casualties results in his nation running out of fighting men and costing them the war.
    • General Bob's callousness results in morale plummeting to rock bottom, and most of his soldiers desert or defect.
  • Reconstructed: General Bob's tactics, costly though they are, are demoralizing enough to the enemy that they sue for peace, preventing the war from dragging on and killing more people on both sides.
  • Zig Zagged: ?
  • Averted: General Bob does not treat his men as completely expendable. This may or may not necessarily entail being A Father to His Men
  • Enforced: The Evil Empire teaches its officers to see their soldiers as expendable.
  • Lampshaded: "I don't care if my soldiers die; that's their job."
  • Invoked: An Evil Chancellor deliberately places General Bob in command of the army to kill off the soldiers loyal to the King.
  • Defied: General Bob starts with this attitude but once he sees that War Is Hell he starts to care far more about his men.
  • Discussed: "The General really doesn't care how many of his own soldiers die, as long he gets to proclaim victory at the end of the battle."
  • Conversed: ???

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