*A/N: Tooth and tail..oh boy..I remembered playing this game when it was on Alpha with my friends and it was really fun. Real time strategy as me (as the leader of a faction.) take over farms for food as you use food to spawn soldiers. Though I'm pretty sure if you stock up too many food, they will spoil when you have way too much food if memory serves me right. So when I won a match, I thought 'Yes! I won! Time to rob my enemy's rations for the people!'..or so I thought..fast forward to this month and when the offical trailer of this game showed up on YouTube and according to the guy who worked on the game (and I shit you not when he said this.) when you win the battle..you are feasting on your fallen enemies. So not only did the game reminded me something out of Redwall..but this game had a dark tone of cannibalism for survival. I was fucking hyped for it. I love games that have some dark themes into the mix and this game tug my heart in it's comfort zone and bought it in a heartbeat and didn't regret it at all. So..this was the point where me and my two friends are on the middle line near four factions(which is usually the players from the community.) as we are asked by the leaders 'Which side do you support?'. Too be honest..we didn't know much about them much. All that we know is that the KSR is a secret police force trying to maintain order in the land(though they could be some sort of tyrant faction wanting to take control of the land making the people miserable. I mean..a secret police? Does that not rise suspicion that the KSR could be trouble?), The dapper Longcoats who have a have grudge on the Civilized for taking innocent lives from the lottery (they were okay at first but were pissed off when the leader's son got taken away by the Civilized from the lottery.) , the scumbag Civilized who are a bunch of corrupted assholes or the humble Commonfolk who helps the poor survive(which you got to admit Hopper is one of the most heroic leaders who sacrifices her arm to help her people survive.)and now..the leaders are staring right at me and my friends waiting for a response..and after doing some campaign missions, I got a feel on which factions I was dealing with. The Longcoats and the Commonfolk are allies to rid the corrupted off the land while the KSR and the Civilized are trying to control the land for their selfish needs..but again..me and my friends don't know which factions to support..so without further ado, Tooth and tail..war is hell..
Warning: This story contains strong violence, possible dark scenes, cannibalism, Strong blood and gore and strong language that is not suitable for readers under 18 or older or readers who are not comfortable in mature scenes. This is my first and only warning I'm giving you. You have been warned. *
War's a joke for me and you,
Wile we know such dreams are true.
Out there, we've walked quite friendly up to Death,-
Sat down and eaten with him, cool and bland,-
Pardoned his spilling mess-tins in our hand.
We've sniffed the green thick odour of his breath,-
Our eyes wept, but our courage didn't writhe.
He's spat at us with bullets and he's coughed
Shrapnel. We chorussed when he sang aloft,
We whistled while he shaved us with his scythe.
Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!
We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.
No soldier's paid to kick against His powers.
We laughed, -knowing that better men would come,
And greater wars: when each proud fighter brags
He wars on Death, for lives; not men, for flags.
- Siegfried Sassoon
Chapter 1
(Dante's pov)
I have always wondered how it would feel to be in a era where war took place before the modern era..turns out..it was hell..soldiers lay dead on the field..homes burned down to the ground..and those who survived..they..they..they devour their fallen enemies..for dinner..I should know..cause I was there..what can I say..war is hell..
..
..
..and it all started with just one game..Tooth and tail..
It all started like this..
It was September 21 2017 and I was playing Tooth and tail with my friends, Roman and Giovanni, on a free for all(while we worked together taking out the Civilized bastards(who were controlled by a medium difficulty AI.) from all sides. When we destroyed the AI, we began going against each other..the fight was tense. Farms were being destroyed left and right, units getting murdered in a split second..but in the end one rose victorious..me..
'The Commonfolk will feast!' I shouted with glee.
That's me. Dante Vera. College student and hardcore gamer. I'm a 24 year old college student who is currently studying culinary but when I'm on break, I'll play video games to relax whether it's PC, mobile, console or handheld..I'll play them to stop my boredom..as long as the games keep me entertained(cause sometimes I can get bored easily.).
'Damn, dude. That was awesome!'
That's Giovanni Moretti. My childhood friend. He likes to joke from time to time but this guy is a genius when it comes to machines and technology.
'No kidding. We should do this more often.'
And that is Roman Volkov. Childhood friend and a man who has a temper if you mess with him. Learned military combat at a young age and doesn't like seeing people picking on the weak. This Russian is not to be messed with and will not hesitate to beat you down to the ground.
'I'm gonna call it day, guys. I'm gonna check out the campaign of this game and get some rest for work.' I chuckled.
'See ya!' Roman and Giovanni said at the same time as I turned off Skype.
So I got off of the multiplayer lobby and went to the story mode that people got so damn hyped about..and I was not disappointed. The intro shows Bellafinde narrating explaining what's been going on. People would eat meat to survive and his son was devoured by the Civilized(who are pieces of shits.) from the lottery resulting a war to begin. After he introduced the factions, he says that the winner shall feast while the defeated..shall be dinner..and just like that..Black screen..I waited for 5 minutes and nothing happened. The black screen appeared after the introduction of the story and I can't find the issue. So as I was going to restart the game, I got electrocuted by just pressing the restart button. It was painful..unbearable..until..darkness..
What felt like hours..I wake up what looks like a military base..something out of a world war military base..I slowly got up as I noticed..I'm not human anymore..I look at my hands..no..paws..fox paws..I touch my face and..I felt fur..a muzzle..and whiskers..this can't be real..
Did the game warped me to the tooth and tail universe?
..
..
..
I got my answer when I met her..as the trumpet was being played to wake everyone up, me and a bunch of kids(yes kids. that are about the age range to 15 to 19 years old. And yes..my age got degraded to 16 year old.) quickly got off the bed as the quartermaster walks in with Sergeant Volkov by her side. Despite her being a rodent, I was kind of on edge. I mean sure she's small but one word from her and I would be in deep shit. She started inspecting us to see if we up ready when she suddenly stopped and noticed that I didn't fix my bed..
..
Whoops.
'You didn't fix your bed. Care to explain?' She narrows her eye at me.
'Sorry, ma'am. I was in a rush to get up on time. Won't happen again, ma'am.'
She stared at me for a good minute(as I pray to God in my mind hoping I don't get myself in trouble for this.) as she puts her hands behind her back..
'Let us hope so..otherwise the sergeant here will not be so forgiving as I am. Do I make myself clear?'
She's talking about Volkov next her..yeah he's there alright..glaring at me like any serious superior would behave..
'Yes, quartermaster ma'am.' I saluted.
'Good.' She nods.
Whew..dodged the bullet there..I need to be more careful..
Things turned to the worse when the quartermaster and Volkov stopped near a sleeping Badger on a bed. The quartermaster nudged her head towards the Badger as Volkov takes out his megaphone and shouted at the Badger's ear to wake up..
..Ow..that made my ears ring.
The Badger jolts out of the bed as Volkov grabbed by the shoulder with rage..the quartermaster was mad..she was not happy at the Badger slacking off..because of that..
'Volkov. I want this child..disciplined. I will not tolerate slackers in our headquarters.' She frowned.
'Yes, Ma'am. Let's go, you brat.' Volkov snarled.
He dragged the Badger out of the room(as the Badger struggled to escaped only to be punched by Volkov in the face to stop. No fucks given here..) as I just watch in horror seeing that kid begging..what was I going to do? Save him? No..all I did was..watch..like a coward I was..
As Volkov and the Badger were out of sight, we headed to the mess hall to get something to eat..so many things were in my mind..how did I headed up in the KSR headquarters? How did these kids get in the base? And most of all..where are Roman and Giovanni? Are they here too? God I hope they are okay..
*A/N: before I sign off, I want give a special thanks to pocketwatch games for making such an awesome game. Hope you make more awesome games in the future and Austin Wintory for making awesome music to set the mood of the game's factions. Support Pocketwatch games on their first official game and hope they join the ranks of famous game developers. Good luck, Pocketwatch games.*
With Call of Duty, Battlefield, and more returning to the 1940s, we have to ask: what are the best WW2 games on PC? The most devastating conflict in our recent history of fighting over land and ideologies has been distilled into heroic charges, tense dogfights, epic digital wars, and savage battles many times over, and here you’ll find the best videogame adaptations of them all.
Whether you’re looking for the grittiness of a beach landing, the strategy of battle planning, the thrill of an aerial dogfight, or intense camaraderie experienced by a band of brothers, there’s a World War II game that has something to offer you. And thanks to the new wave of interest in the period, some of these games sport astonishing graphics and modern, punchy gunplay.
So from massive, free-to-play vehicular battlefields to complex war games, you’re bound to find something below to keep you duking it out for countless hours in our round-up of the finest Second World War games.
The best WW2 games are:
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War Thunder
World War 2 was a combined arms effort, with land, sea, and air forces offering equally invaluable efforts, and War Thunder truly captures that. It originally threw a spotlight on the war’s colossal aerial battles, but soon went on to include land battles through the medium of noisy tank warfare, and naval efforts via its sea-based expansion.
Boasting a dizzying number of historically accurate aircraft, tanks, and boats from pretty much every nation involved in the war, this exceptional free-to-play WW2 game offers a great multiplayer experience that neatly sits in the middle ground between complex simulation and arcade fighter. Like a sim, War Thunder has incredible attention to detail that makes it compelling to play. Each machine feels genuinely different and all offer their own challenges. And even when you’re not in the heat of battle there are tactics to consider as you stock your hangars with various new vehicles and upgrade them to suit your approach.
Developer Gaijin Entertainment has expanded each of its combat types out, so you can read our War Thunder naval combat guide or our beginner’s guide to War Thunder tank battles if you need some help learning the basics.
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World of Tanks
Wargaming’s flagship free-to-play WW2 game is obsessed with tanks, hence the name World of Tanks. It’s full of incredibly detailed artillery platforms and caterpillar tracks for you to drool over before rolling into battle. Hundreds of these glorious machines can be researched, unlocked, and purchased as you gain experience and resources from every tense match.
World of Tanks is a game you can dip your toes into, play for a bit, and have fun. On the surface, it’s simple and arcade-like, but underneath the chassis is the loud, angry engine of something more serious. How vulnerable is the machine gun port of the Tiger II? Where are the soft spots on the indomitable IS-3? What is the effective armour thickness of the T-32’s upper glacis? Armour penetration, angles, weak spots – this is the stuff you need to know.
To taste victory time after time, to work your way up the tank tiers and eventually get your name on leaderboards, you need to make a significant time investment. It would feel a bit like work if this wasn’t a game about blowing up tanks, which never stops being fun. And with constant updates, new maps, modes, features, and an audience of hundreds of millions of players, you’re always learning. It might not be the most realistic game at times, but it’s easily one of the best tank games on PC.
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World of Warships
The third of Wargaming’s WW2 games, World of Warships sees the tried and tested formula of World of Tanks transposed to the sea. It’s not just World of Tanks with ships, though, as the switch to naval combat has informed a lot of big changes. These sea battles are slower, more thoughtful, and ultimately more tactical than their land-based counterparts.
Out in the open sea, there’s a sense of dread and vulnerability that you just don’t get in Wargaming’s other titles. Not this severe, anyway. There’s no hiding or running away in World of Warships – just plans, some of which will fall apart, and others that could, with some help from your team, lead to a glorious victory.
Air support adds an extra interesting wrinkle. You can hurl the fighters and bombers positioned on your decks at your foes, and suddenly the game starts to feel like an RTS. But one where you’re also frantically trying to line up your killer cannons and praying to Poseidon that this time, this time, it’ll be a direct hit. That is what makes it one of the best WW2 games on PC. On top of all this, Wargaming also do a terrific job of updating the game, with expansions adding new ships like a Pan-Asian line of destroyers to the game, not to mention the odd World of Warships seasonal event.
Call of Duty: WWII
If you are looking for breadth and realistic details, then COD: WW2 might rub you up the wrong way with its Eurocentric campaign and PPSh-41-toting German soldiers. However, what it does better than all but the best WW2 games is connect the player to the squad they fight alongside, all the way from the beaches of Normandy to the capture of Ludendorff Bridge. It does this by tying health, ammo, and grenade refills to squad members, forcing you to seek out your medic if you are low on health, even if a tank separates you. It is an elegant and organic way of simulating the bonds that form between brothers in arms.
COD: WW2 also stands out as one of the best WW2 games because of it relatively recent release date. After the glut of World War 2 games that hit PC in the mid-2000s we endured a decade-long drought where all the leaps and bounds made in videogame graphics helped bring other conflicts and settings to life while WW2 games were left behind. In our COD: WW2 review we were impressed by the audiovisual fidelity, which lends the campaign an almost filmic level of sheen, whether that is the sumptuous ring that fills your ears every time you reload an M1 Garand, or the unsparing particle effects that give every texture and environment their due depth. Sure, you will have seen and fought these WW2 battles in games before, but they have never looked this convincing.
Call of Duty 2
Call of Duty 2 was a jolt of electricity applied to the WW2 formula when it launched in 2005. Familiar scenes like the D-Day landings were recreated in greater detail, with more drama and a nail-biting sense of vulnerability. And, at the time, it was the best the war had ever looked.
Read more: Here are all the COD campaigns, ranked best to worst
With four campaigns across three theatres, the global scope of the war was on display. Like the original Call of Duty, it followed British, American and Russian troops, but also presented the north African campaign for the first time, as the Brits fought across the desert, melting and dying and hiding from tanks.
Despite being over a decade old, COD2 has stood the test of time thanks to the fact that it was one of the first games to add features like regenerating health, so you could focus on the battle and not worry about scurrying around looking for health kits. And with improved ally AI, it really felt like you were leading proper soldiers – all of them named – rather than mindless models with guns attached to them. Not just one of the best WW2 games, Call of Duty 2 is one of the best FPS games on PC.
Company of Heroes 2: Ardennes Assault
As our Company of Heroes 2 review points out – despite capturing the horror of winter warfare the RTS sequel didn’t quite hit the same high notes as its venerable predecessor. But with the standalone expansion of Ardennes Assault, Relic reinvigorated the single-player portion of the series, giving it one of its most interesting campaigns and regaining the WW2 RTS games crown.
It is all about the dynamic map. The Ardennes region is one big, constantly shifting warzone, with the Germans attempting to lock down as much territory as possible. Controlling the US forces of Baker, Able and Dog Company – all with unique mechanics and strengths – players must force the Germans out, bit by bit, in a desperate, bleak campaign. It is not just about winning battles; a victory doesn’t matter if it has cost you all your veteran units and left the rest of your force tattered and weak. A Pyrrhic victory spells doom for your campaign.
Random objectives and events can crop up in battles and on the campaign map itself, so no campaign is alike. You might be tasked with assassinating an officer during a mission, or ambushing a convoy on the campaign map, and failure or victory will have a tangible impact on the rest of the war. It is a persistent, savage war, where failure is always nipping at the heels of the increasingly desperate US forces. With details like that, no wonder it is one of the best WW2 games on PC.
Commandos 2: Men of Courage
They don’t make them like this anymore, and that is a tragedy. Commandos 2 is 17 years old, but remains utterly unsurpassed. It is a puzzle game, essentially. You control a group of operatives behind enemy lines, across ten elaborate, complex, devilishly hard missions.
Each mission is a huge, sprawling thing with a beautifully detailed, liberating map and tricky objectives that require a lot of planning, scouting, smarts and a spot of trial and error. Objectives run the gamut from stealing documents and rescuing spies to blowing up ships and stealing vehicles. Getting in the way of that are countless patrols, guards, minefields and even harsh weather. Luckily, the Commandos have more than a few tricks up their sleeves.
You have a spy who can steal clothes and disguise himself as the enemy, a secret agent who can distract and drug Nazis, and a battle-hardened Green Beret who likes to get a bit of blood on his hands. You even have a dog, Whisky, and he is both delightful and good at drawing the attention of enemies. Each mission gives you a specific group to use, and then it is up to you how you want to go about completing the main, secondary, and bonus objectives. It is this kind of freedom that makes Commandos 2 not just one of the best WW2 games on PC, but one of the best PC games of all time, period.
Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad
As much as games like Brothers in Arms and World of Tanks aim for historical accuracy in their weapons, machinery, and locations, they still offer a Hollywood-tinted depiction of the action. Red Orchestra 2 removes the filters and offers an unflinchingly difficult simulator shooter. Heroes of Stalingrad recreates battles from the Eastern Front in a Battlefield-like combined arms settings with soldier classes and vehicles. Throwing pray-and-spray, gung-ho attitudes to the wind, Red Orchestra demands strict teamwork, caution, and a considered tactical approach to objectives.
It is the hardships of being an individual cog in the machine that makes Red Orchestra compelling. Machine-gunners are vital for covering fire, allowing other players to advance down the field. But holding down the trigger too long causes the barrel to melt and buckle, requiring it to be replaced in a lengthy maintenance animation. Tanks are murder machines when fully crewed, but attempt to commandeer one by yourself and you will find yourself a sitting target as you attempt to aim your cannon. As well as the stresses of being part of a team, as an individual you’ll have to constantly count your rounds as a complete lack of HUD removes any indication as to what is left in your magazine.
Each round of Red Orchestra 2 is hard work, but like ARMA and other bullet-physic heavy shooting simulations, there’s a distinct, unrivalled sense of victory with every point scored. Few WW2 games make you work this hard for a single kill. If you’re more interested in the Pacific conflict then there’s even a spiritual successor from Tripwire Interactive called Rising Storm that’s just as brutally realistic.
Silent Hunter III
The Second World War is frequently depicted as a violently bloodthirsty, explosive, and ear-drum bursting conflict. But not every element of all-out war is noisy or fast paced. For the quiet, considered, cold-blooded killers out there, there is nothing quite like Silent Hunter’s unique brand of stealth. Throw out your undercover OSS agents, and submerge yourself in underwater naval warfare.
Related: Check out our rundown of the best stealth games
Silent Hunter III, despite being over a decade old, remains one of the best WW2 games, and allows you to command a U-Boat full of German seamen under the surface of the Atlantic ocean. Freeform missions simply inform you of targets and naval traffic, allowing you to conduct the operation in whatever conniving manner you so wish. You will need to be map savvy; Silent Hunter is a gloriously uncompromising submarine sim, and without solid navigation skills you’ll be firing torpedoes into the open ocean instead of the side of a Allied merchant ship. Patience is the key ingredient though, as you lurk in wait as your plan slowly comes together.
Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway
The Brothers in Arms games offer some of the best stories in the WW2 niche, filled with personal tales of struggle and camaraderie. Hell’s Highway, the third in the BiA series, brings the troubles of the 101st Airborne’s Matt Baker to a close with a harrowing story that emphasises the relentless loss of life every soldier was forced to endure, evoking the likes of Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers.
Backing up the story is a fantastic FPS game. It borrows the third-person cover system of the Rainbow Six: Vegas games, making the squad tactics a much smoother, effective element. War is hell in Brothers in Arms, and the methodical employment of flanking maneuvers and suppressing fire is the only way you’ll be able to survive it. Thanks to the tight-knit relationships Hell’s Highway weaves over its campaign, by the end you will really feel as if you helped pull your comrades through the dirt.
And damn is it grim. Grisly, too. Body parts are blown off, men are turned into bloody bags of meat – it is nasty stuff. It does not feel like Hell’s Highway revels in the gore, though. It feels more like an attempt to present war as a horrible, traumatising scenario that you should be glad you are experiencing on a PC rather than in reality.
Battlefield 1942
With Battlefield 1942, it felt like the FPS genre was evolving. Until DICE released the first in what would be an enduring series, multiplayer games were mostly concerned with the glory of the individual. They were about fast reflexes and kill counts. Battlefield 1942, however, is all about cooperation.
You can see where a lot of the series’ systems began, like the roles or classes, the addition of vehicles like tanks and planes and the importance of controlling the map. There was an even greater focus on combined arms warfare, though. You could be bombarding coastlines with your capital ship while your chum flies around in a bomber, trying to take out manned installations protecting the coast. The scale and diversity was crazy. And the maps let you duke it out in all of WW2’s theatres, so you could fight as the British in El Alamein or the Imperial Japanese Navy in Iwo Jima.
A few years ago, EA made it free, but it has since been removed from Origin due to Gamespy going out of business, leaving the game without servers. However! There are still places you can download it from, along with community servers, so there’s still life in the game yet – you can also get Battlefield 1942 in HD with the right mods. But should that life run out, DICE are bringing the 40s back with their next game: Battlefield V.
Order of Battle: U.S. Pacific
Order of Battle: Pacific takes the now well-worn Panzer General-style of wargames and manages to do more with than any other of the classic game’s successors have in a long time. It is an intricate-yet-approachable wargame, with logical rules and a distinct eye for detail.
Each move becomes a series of puzzles. Objectives need to be reached quickly, with no dawdling. Yet extending your grasp for side-missions can also provide bonuses further down the line. Each decision expands into new opportunities and further questions.
It is also a game that finally succeeds at naval transportation and combat, which is pretty rare among the best strategy games, and a vital feature considering the Pacific setting means much of your time will be set at sea. Order of Battle’s approach to naval is exceptionally strong, and makes sailing from port to port as interesting as battles themselves.
Hidden & Dangerous 2
Hidden & Dangerous 2 may be an ageing veteran that needs a stick to stay mobile these days, but its tales of silent heroics, undercover operations, and daring strikes have been unmatched in the 15 years since its release.
Jai hanuman sun tv serial today episode. Rainbow Six for 1944, Hidden & Dangerous 2 is a tactical squad shooter with all the trimmings we’re clamoring for in the modern era: permadeath, persistent characters, detailed operation loadout screens, and fully open maps with mission goals to be completed any which way you fancy. Leading a squad of four stiff-upper-lipped SAS officers, there is a fascinating variety of missions that take you to every theatre of the war, from a snowy top secret research base to the dense jungles of Burma.
War Is Hell Quotes
Related: Here are the best old games for more classics like this
The level of freedom is comparable to Hitman: Blood Money (there is even the option to strip enemies and steal their clothing), and the lack of enforced silence means when things go belly-up you can crack open the heavy machineguns and simply murder your way out. The controls and systems are all fairly clunky and the AI of your squadmates is never up to scratch, but the thrill of Hidden & Dangerous’ campaign is absolutely worth pushing through the niggles for.
World of Warplanes
World of Warplanes lets you live out your fantasy of being a World War 2 fighter pilot, absolutely for free. Wargaming’s WW2 game thrusts you into the cockpit of over five aircraft types that can include thousands of customisable configurations. Your eternal fight for dominance of the skies sees you facing action-packed 12v12 dogfights that require careful communication and effective teamwork for you to claim victory.
This free PC game is set in the Golden Age of military aviation, and it has the environments to match. You can choose to fight for one of seven nations, but the canvas through which you’ll be targeting the baddies is inspired by land masses all over the world. It means that, if you’re anything like us and get shot out the sky on the regular, you’ll at least be able to enjoy the view on the way down.
IL-2 Sturmovik 1946
Though IL-2 Sturmovik is almost old enough to leave school and get a job, it remains one of the best simulation games of all time, particularly those with a military bent.
1946, then, is something very special, because it contains IL-2 Sturmovik, its sequel, and a whole bunch of expansions, which means you get an almost bewildering number of campaigns and richly detailed planes, and by the time you are done with it all, you will be effortlessly pulling off Yo-Yos like a master ace and speeding across the skies in Yaks and MiGs like a natural.
While 1946 collects all the pre-2007 IL-2 Sturmovik games and expansions, it also adds nine extra campaigns and lots of lovely jets in an alternate history version of the war that sees Germany and Russia duking it out in the skies in high speed jet battles. The missions are scripted, though you will find dynamic battles in the older games that come with 1946, and you’ll find yourself on tense bombing runs, foiling deadly raids and getting into plenty of thrilling dogfights.
Read more: Here’s our rundown of the best FPS games on PC
And there we have it: the very best WW2 games you can find on PC. In need of even more? Then our guide to the best war games will provide even more experiences across many other different wars, both fictional and real, or you can head to our partner site Wargamer for a look at the best WWI games. But, until next time, tinkety tonk and down with the Nazis, old fruit.
Otto Dix, Suicide in the Trenches — big toe on the trigger.
I’ve been where you are now and I know just how you feel. It’s entirely natural that there should beat in the breast of every one of you a hope and desire that some day you can use the skill you have acquired here. Suppress it! You don’t know the horrible aspects of war. I’ve been through two wars and I know. I’ve seen cities and homes in ashes. I’ve seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, war is Hell!
War Is Hell Game Of Thrones
— Trope NamerWilliam Tecumseh Sherman speaking to the graduating class of the Michigan Military Academy on June 19, 1879.note
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War! Hunh! Good God, y'all! What is it good for? Absolutely nuthin'!Truth in Television, obviously.
When this theme is in play, war is an infernal, nasty, traumatizing nightmare, and anyone who comes out of it alive will end up a Shell-Shocked Veteran. Those who take pleasure in it are Ax-CrazyBlood Knights or worse. This trope gained its name by the famous quote from General William T. Sherman, 'War is all Hell, and I have every intent of making it so.' Most people quoting it shorten it to the trope name (as Sherman himself did in the page quote).
The motivations for war are depicted as harking back to humanity's basest and most savage instincts: pride, greed, important resources, dogma, fear, disgust, hatred, retribution, power, insanity,megalomania, or even all of the above. The brutal and callous force of wartime authority overrides all individual thought.
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Sometimes, the war is shown to be unwinnable regardless of the sacrifices made and moral codes abandoned. There is some correlation between being on the losing side of a war and making a work following this trope.
War Is Hell works often show the cumulative long-term effect of exposure to pain, deprivation, violence, and military culture: the horror goes on and on, dehumanizing everybody a little more each night. Heroes in these stories will typically struggle to Prevent the War, or end it as bloodlessly and quickly as possible. If not, then merely surviving physically, and with most of their humanity and sanity intact.
May overlap with, but not to be confused with, Hell Is War. Contrast War Is Glorious, which is not mutually exclusive with this tropenote , especially when the audience gets a kick out of seeing people kill each other, no matter how ugly or condemning the work is — or, more altruistically, when soldiers are painted as heroes specifically because they've volunteered to fight in order to keep the horrors of war away from their loved ones. See also Armies Are Evil (highly negative takes on the military).
Of course, war is traumatizing to many who experience this trope. Therefore, Real Life examples are redundant.
Examples:
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'Les Grandes Misères de la guerre' (or 'The Miseries and Misfortunes of War', as it's known in English) is a series of etchings depicting the cruelties and atrocities of the Thirty Years' War.
The Triumph Of Death by Pieter Bruegel the Elder shows how skeletons walk around and triumph in every way. Some of them are soldiers.
Francisco de Goya 's Los Desastras De La Guerra (The Disasters of War) and The Third Of May, 1808 show the brutalities and dehumanizing effect of the Napoleonic Wars in Spain.
Guernica by Pablo Picasso was inspired by the Spanish Civil War bombardement of the Spanish town Guernica and is perhaps the most iconic anti-war painting of the 20th century.
The drawings of Otto Dix, who experienced it first hand during World War I.
Nie Wieder Krieg! by Käthe Kollwitz is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. It shows a woman shouting: No More War!.
Often turns up in Rogue Trooper to offset the exciting adventures. Many a story ends something like this:
Helm: Wow, that was harsh. Rogue: Yeah, but you know what's harsher? War in general.
Sgt. Rock had this as a regular theme. The most brutal punishment he could think of for one recurring German officer whom he defeated in personal combat was to let him live: 'You'll suffer through this war like I have to.'
Also a regular theme of DC Comics' Enemy Ace.
Prominently featured in the first issues of Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja , which takes place in eastern Russia during World War III.
Sin City: Invoked in dialogue — from Wallace, mostly. Marv briefly mentions being in a war and how horrible that experience was. The Villain Protagonist in Rats also vaguely refers to a war. Since it's heavily implied that he's a Nazi war-criminal, it's obvious which one it was.
In Alan Moore's 'D.R. & Quinch Get Drafted' for 2000 AD, Waldo's self-described 'first exposure to the total insanity that is war' is when he realizes that there aren't any expensive foreign restaurants on the desolate slime jungle planet to which his platoon is being sent to fight on the front line in a very bitter conflict.
Amazons Attack tries this. Ends up being one huge Face Palm.
IDW has taken the time to explore this a few times in their run of The Transformers:
The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers runs on this trope, as a deconstruction of a franchise that usually takes a Rule of Cool approach to its central Civil War theme.
The Transformers: Monstrosity: Focuses on the bleakness of war. The Autobots realize that they're going to be in this for the long run, and the entire planet has to pick a side, and many want to leave, not wanting to die or trust anyone. The Autobots and Decepticons also realize that ideals, ruthlessness and compassion will not win the war, resources will, and that they may have damned themselves with what little is left on the planet.
Quite a bit of The Transformers: Robots in Disguise and The Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye has been an exploration of just what it means for individuals to have been locked in a brutal war for literally millions of years and the effects that has had on those individuals. Some of the characters were Child Soldiers who were turned on, given a very brief education (basically, here's how to walk, talk, and hold a gun, took about fifteen minutes) and thrust immediately into combat. Many of the characters have serious psychological issues caused by the violence they've endured.
Transformers: Wings of Honor also uses this trope, though near the end. For most of the first story, it's more of an action-adventure approach to the war, with the Elite Guard members having fun adventures with quirky or Card Carrying Villains, bar a few instances like when one of the scientists is gunned down, or when the Decepticon leaders have a war meeting, and they're all killed by an unwitting suicide bomber. Then the Sudden Downer Ending hits, where the Special Ops team goes rogue, kills almost all the extras and a good chunk of the main cast, and the base is destroyed with very few survivors. In the sequel, the survivors try to take a victory, and though the Big Bad and the traitors are defeated, a new Warlord takes his place, and restarts the war, possibly killing The Hero, and the story ends with the Autobots having to leave the planet as it cannot support them.
Behind the dragons and mages in Arrowsmith is a very traditional First World War story, complete with analogues of gas warfare and all the other horrors.
The main character of The Boy Who Wanted War thought that War Is Glorious and so he got himself into the space army. After that, he realized that his parents had a good reason to try to keep him from the war.
Sturmtruppen is a satiric comic set during World War II. And once you get past the Black Comedy, you see these soldiers deal with food that goes from barely edible to containing cholera, a sergeant who won't hesitate to torture you for fun, incompetent officers ruining the work of their more competent colleagues and getting subordinates killed while getting away with it due to Nepotism, logistic officers embezzling the much needed food and clothes or (in one occasion) burning them to hide the lack of winter clothes.. And the soldiers are so desensitised to all of this they treat it as normal, and even joke about the new guy who thought that War Is Gloriousbeing blown up on a minefield he himself set up and surviving without arms, legs, his five senses and the ability to call the doctors whenever he wets himself.
In one Usagi Yojimbo story taking place when Usagi was a Kid Samurai in training, Usagi is out with his master going about how he's going to fight in an awesome war and be all badass. His master shows him the sight of a recent battle to explain just what war results in: a field of decaying corpses and rusting armor. They meet a surviving soldier from the losing army, who recalls just how horrible it all was. This has an impact on Usagi, who wonders that if it's so bad, why do people say War Is Glorious?
Invoked by Dmitri Romanov in Nikolai Dante - he scoffs at old-fashioned ideas like 'smart weaponry' and 'surgical strikes', believing that wars should have massive casualties, including many civilians, so that people never forget that war is horrendous. He leaves unsaid that fear of such terrors will discourage people from going to war against. He says this when the story is a year into a civil war which he intentionally started.
Über takes place in an Alternate History World War II where Nazi Germany was able to create superhuman soldiers during the last days of the war. Though they are able to save the Nazis' from the brink of defeat during the Battle of Berlin, the most destructive conflict in human history soon turns even worse, as the Allies gain the ability to create their own Ubers which escalates the fighting to even more catastrophic proportions. A German general goes as far as committing suicide when he realizes the Ubers will only prolong the war and even more people will die as result. To cap it all off, its stated that its too late for the Nazis to win (as they were left too debilitated following the fighting), but at least they can make sure everyone else loses.
Birthright: This trope features heavily in the backstory as the fantastic world of Terrenos is locked into a Forever War against an Evil Overlord that wants to spread his control further and beyond. The fighting took its toll on Terrenos' greatest heroes, who realizing that they were not making any progress in defeating their enemy, they chose to flee to Earth and place a protective barrier on Terrenos to contain him instead. Without its protectors, the people grew desperate and ended up kidnapping a teenager from our world (the main protagonist) who was supposedly fated as The Chosen One to save them. He too hit the Despair Event Horizon after witnessing so many horrors, but unlike his predecessors, hestroke a deal with the Big Bad to become his Dragon and return to Earth to help him merge it with Terrenos. It's also implied that the war is taking a toll on the Big Bad too and he might not be as evil as we are lead to believe. In short: war makes monsters out of all of us.
French graphic novel Une Aventure Rocambolesque De Vincent Van Gogh La Ligne De Front ('A Fantastic Adventure of Vincent van Gogh: The Front Line') has a disturbingly literal take on the trope. Soldiers quietly turn into blank eyed husks while nobody is watching, amoral scientists find themselves transforming into their own explosives, and our protagonist eventually encounters the 'Mother of Grenades', a Creepy Child whose true form is a.. vaguely human thing made out of corpses and trench mud.
Downplayed in Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW), which makes it clear that during the war between the Resistance and Eggman, people did die.
Kalash93 has a penchant for playing with this trope and War Is Glorious simultaneously.
In Racer and the Geek, Telny is definitely scarred from his experiences, but also shows a twisted attraction to warfare and violence.
The protagonist of Shell Shock combines this with an obsession over getting revenge, as well as the idea of military glory, for some seriously dark results. The story is an unflinchingly brutal example of a 'war is hell' piece. Seriously, take a look at it.
While we don't see much of the Civil War in Welcome To The Brothel, the little we do see, combined with its effects on the protagonist, vividly illustrate this trope on a psychological level.
The same war is brought up again in Relax. The protagonist mentions that he's going to have to return to it soon. It sounds nasty.
Vividly demonstrated in I Did Not Want To Die. It is a tragedy, where the desire to fight and protect ones homeland brings naught but death and destruction to it.
His entire Farn Baumrinde trilogy, especially 'Barren' and 'Black Tulip'. Graphic depictions of both combat and PTSD.
Caravan. The fic is based on The War on Terror with a heavy emphasis on the tragic futility of fighting in Afghanistan.
In Along Came a Spider the AFFC's preparations for the Clan Invasion include training up more psychiatrists to deal with the expected thousands of shell-shocked soldiers.
In Child of the Storm, this is Played With - Asgard has a very martial culture, but is also aware of the messier aspects, as is pretty much everyone else with even the slightest bit of experience of combat.
The sequel's description, and the Word of God, have it that the War for the Dawn, between the Alliance of Realms, and Surtur's forces, was this, being explicitly compared to another example of this trope: the Last Great Time War.
In the Discworld fics of A.A. Pessimal, students at the Guild of Assassins are taught that it is better to kill a handful of people at the right time (if a suitable contract exists) than to let those people live to start a war that causes political instability, economic havoc with a detrimental effect on wealth and wellbeing, and which might incidentally result in the lives of thousands being lost. Thus you might be credited for bringing about a greater good - and you still get to claim the contract fee. So steel yourself to committing the correct inhumation at the apposite time, and show no pity. Be professional. Nil mortifi sine lucre.
In Fractured, a Mass Effect/Star Wars/Borderlandscrossover and its sequel, the price of victory (and even what that means) is explored.
In Fractured, the Reapers are defeated, but not due to overcoming Fantastic Racism and fighting as a united galaxy. Instead, old wounds fester while fancy Trans-Galactic Republic hardware does most of the work, letting an obscure department take over the entire government in the name of galactic security.
A Star Destroyer pulls a self-destruct but the notion of No Endor Holocaust for the nearby Asari colony is completely averted as debris kills thousands (which is still regarded as better than what would have happened otherwise).
The Asari are depicted as trying to defend their homeworld in Origins but everything goes wrong and the defense fails.
On a more personal level, Samantha Shepard suffers multipleHeroic BSoD episodes; one leads her to essentially commit war crimes, the second tends toward depression. Thankfully, There Are No Therapists is averted, though this does not lead to an instant recovery by any means. The fact that she's been resurrected three times is not going over well, and she even places a 'No Extraordinary Measures' (an In-Universe Do Not Resucitate) in her file.
James Vega and Ashley Williams, once friends, are split by a decision James makes in the context of defending an installation. He refuses to fire on an enemy ship which appears to be retreating, much to Ashley's chagrin. She is proven right when the retreat ends up being an act, but its attack fails.
Brick loses an arm; better an arm than catching The Plague.
Jack sees her students kidnapped, is confronted with the realization that if you train kids to kill under the guise of fighting an Alien Invasion at the behest of a government using their resources, at some point said benefactor might ask that the trainees do it for real, and as a result gets to watch one of them die.
In the Uplifted series the author certainly doesn't gloss over the nastiness of the war; an example would be the Italian sailor who is joking one moment, and cut in half the next by a British airstrike.
Tiberium Wars has graphic, savage, and brutal descriptions of soldiers being shot, stabbed, burned, and vaporized. That's before we get to how completely nasty the battlefields are; one chapter has a group of Nod soldiers slogging through raw sewage, with one soldier getting it in a fresh bullet wound. In one of the latest chapters, we get to see the effects of a full armored assault with Mammoth Tanks from the perspective of the receiving end. It's about as brutally terrifying as one can imagine. In Chapter 17, a Nod officer executes his own wounded to keep them from falling into enemy hands, because he believes they will be tortured and killed. 3 weeks into the war, GDI has managed to fill a stadium with 300 thousand body bags.
Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness is another prime example, depicting the horrific ordeal the members of the eponymous insurgency go through to keep the darkness at bay as best they could, culminating in a final battle (the Battle of Hogwarts from the book, retold from their perspective) in which almost everyone dies. Unfortunately, it fumbles that ball badly, as the vast majority of the DA want to fight, have embraced the fact most of them will die, and when someone tries to convince them not to fight, he's portrayed as being in the wrong. The themes clash so badly that the entire story is tainted.
Warhammer 40000 Trouble brought it to the Refuge in Audacity level with random nuclear strike killed people 8 times larger than the Alien Invasion themselves, only reason that keeps La Résistance able to fight is because the Power of Trust.
What About Witch Queen? isn't too graphic in its depiction of war, but the Hell is there, especially during the fights in Stone Streams, which end up looking a bit like trench warfare, with bodies being trampled, people fighting not only with swords and crossbows, but also nails and teeth and both sides taking horrible casualties. The Chains of Commanding weigh heavily on some characters and both sides have bastards and normal people among them. There are some disturbing scenes, such as when one character crawls out of a pile of dead bodies where he was Playing Possum and his friends nearly shoot him because they think his usually-blue uniform is red. There's also this moment where unnamed Weselton soldier manages to walk out of explosion zone, but dies moments later, because, in the words of narrative, he was 'pouring blood from everywhere'.
Every story in Poké Wars is filled with examples of this trope. The effects of the supercharged Pokémon attacks are described in graphic detail, as well as the feelings of the victim if it's still alive after the hit. The characters' reactions to the more trauma-inducing happenings are just as vividly written.
Skitty screamed both from the pain of the impact and the indescribable agony that arose from the corrupted blood that coursed through her veins, destroying everything they touched. She fought through the pain, struggling to get up before anything could take advantage of her vulnerable state. She tried to get up only to have her legs buckle. Her strength left her as the Ariados venom in her blood began to slowly digest her organs. She [Solidad] opened her eyes; the scene of her Lapras dying still replayed over and over again in her mind. No matter what she did, she could not erase the sight of Lapras's eyes bursting and her skin scorching as thousands of volts surged through her body, burning her alive.
The TSAB – Acturus War has some of this, but it's not a key focus.
Winter War. Aizen won, Gin has control of Seireitei, and the few surviving shinigami form a very weak Resistance.. those that Aizen hasn't captured and experimented on. The survivors have had to abandon most of their pre-war honor codes- they've given up on the one-on-one duels that they insist on in Bleach canon, and when a minor character begins using healing kidou to kill in very messy ways the characters let him, even though in peacetime they would be horrified. The fic is not shy about the physical and mental costs of fighting a war, either. Reverse Mole Hisagi in particular is well on his way to being a Shell-Shocked Veteran, despite the war not being over.
There's also the fact that the shinigami aren't able/willing to do their jobs of keeping souls in balance and sending the dead from the human world to Soul Society. This means that the entire structure - Soul Society, the human world and the Hollow world of Hueco Mundo - is in danger of collapsing in the not-too distant future. So even if the war goes in favour of the increasingly damaged Resistance, it could yet be for nothing.
Avatar: The Last Airbender's fanfic Embers explores this trope even more than the original cartoon. It's clearly shown what losing their loved ones and constantly fighting for survival does to the characters, especially Child Soldiers. Zuko has more issuses than just being extremely paranoid, Katara snaps after years of repressing herself emotionally over the loss of her mother and getting Promotion to Parent, Aang lives in denial and it's the only thing protecting him from the same fate. The only two well-adjusted characters in the main cast seem to be Toph and Sokka, but considering the theme of this fic, their issues are yet to be shown.
The Immortal Game, formerly titled Ponies Make War, has this trope as a basic theme.
Ace Combat: The Equestrian War shows that, as the war with the griffins is progressing, some ponies simply want to quit fighting and live a normal life. Many of them were traumatized by the first major conflict that hit Equestria in hundreds of years. This is emphasized further in the sequel, Wings of Unity.
Prince/Commissar Blueblood's experience with canister shot in Blueblood: Hero of Equestria is quite graphic. To whit, the prince is grazed across the withers by a shrapnel; the poor guy next to him 'virtually exploded' and is reduced to an unrecognizable blob of gore. Cue Vomit Indiscretion Shot. Blueblood then re-evaluates his stance on commoners and nobles.
'There, lying before me, I saw that all a pony ever was, and will be, is blood, organs, flesh, and bone wrapped up in a fragile sack of skin. All the stuff that had previously seemed so valuable to me; social class, hierarchy, manners, parties, and all of that upper class aristocratic nonsense was once my very reason for living, all of that just didn’t seem so important anymore.'
The rest of the chapter describes the field reduced to a Corpse Land, a mortally wounded soldier crying out to his mother, his goddess, anyone to save him, and laments how the last thing he ever saw was the commissar's skull-badge. It also laments the fact that Blueblood can't remember anyone's name or face, and cursing the name of whoever thought that artillery was a 'dignified' weapon.
Fallen King has this as a major theme. Joey and the others are force to make difficult, morally questionable choices and grapple with the fact that they and their world will never be the same.
Mega Man: Defender of the Human Race has this as a clear theme of the series; despite his many victories over Wily, the battles he's fought and losses suffered affect Mega Man greatly.
The entire galaxy is hit with this in Sonic X: Dark Chaos. Not many battles are described directly in story.. but the aftermath of those battles are. The Metarex and Tsali steal the Planet Eggs of worlds to siphon Chaos Energy from them, turning the planets into lifeless rocks. Many of the planets Sonic and friends search are either beyond saving or about to be destroyed. One world they find is nothing but a Corpse Land; another is obliterated by an exploding Planet Egg before their very eyes. Others are corrupted by Dark Chaos Energy or infested with Shroud feeding on the remains. Disease and starvation run rampant. The war between the Demons and Angels is described just as brutally, with gigantic war machines the size of towns clashing in merciless battles of attrition that can scour whole worlds of life in days, and plenty of Rape, Pillage, and Burn (on a planetary scale) from both sides.
The best example comes at the end of Episode 68; a Demon after-action report details that the entire Leo constellation was eaten by Shroud, with 'acceptable' losses of 36.8 trillion people
Eugenesis is an extremely frank and grim depiction of what the Cybertronian War has been like for all involved. Characters, even important and beloved ones, can die pointless, horrible deaths. The usual tropes and beats of Transformers fiction are subverted or denied, and mention is made frequently that almost all of Cybertron's former culture is gone completely. Not surprisingly, it's written by one of the writers of The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers, which has similar themes.
In Sean Bean Saves Westeros, the 'real life'Sean Bean is transported into the land of Westeros of A Song of Ice and Fire. Now living as Ned Stark, not just playing him on TV, Sean is horrified by the situations he's now thrust into, but he adapts.
In the sixth chapter of Shielded Under the Raptor's Wings, titled 'The Truth of War', a Minbari ground force launches a charge on open terrain against a Human force that outnumber and outguns them by a large margin, and gets graphically slaughtered. This was done because, otherwise, the Minbari back home would have dismissed the tales of the survivors (those who had been evaquated in time, those who had already spent there their tours of duty before evacuation became necessary, and those too wounded to fight) as the justifications of cowards.
Harmony Theory: Though the Solar Kingdom and Lunar Republic haven't officially come to blows(Yet), the fighting that has happened is extremely brutal and graphic. Especially from the relatively pacifistic Rainbow Dash and later, the rest of the mane six. who has woken up in this future and isn't used to warfare.
This is implied to have been the case for the Trainer-Ranger Wars mentioned in Pokémon Reset Bloodlines. The last one ocurred around forty years before the beginning of the story, and even in the present time there's considerable animosity lingering between the Trainer and Ranger nations. Lt. Surge, a veteran of the last war, is implied to have lost many comrades and witnessed many horrors during his time in the military.
Davion & Davion (Deceased) sees the horrors of war dragged back from the far edges of the Star League to its core worlds, with millions of military and civilian casualties, as well as billions of refugees as entire worlds are rendered uninhabitable.
In Fire and Shadow, ShadowClan does a sneak attack on WindClan in the dead of night in revenge for WindClan supposedly murdering their cats. It's Firepaw's first battle and he's horrified by how brutal it is. Thirteen cats (including a few apprentinces and elders) are killed and several of the cats die of grave injuries (including having their stomachs torn open). ShadowClan ends up kidnapping a kit to raise as their own and imprisoning an injured warrior who doesn't flee with his Clanmates.
Fallout: Equestria and its vast library of Recursive Fanfiction naturally inherit this trope from the Fallout series, usually with the normally Actual Pacifist culture of Equestria experiencing the horrors of war for the first time, and ultimately leading to devastation via Fantastic Nuke.
Scars Of War is an unfinished story about the aftermath of a three-year war known as 'the Great Battle' that Ponyland was involved in with another land. Many ponies, foals included, lost their lives. The war has left a mark that the ponies only start to recover from two years after it ended.
In This Bites!, one of Cross's main goals is to prevent the Marineford War, not just to save Ace and Whitebeard and prevent Blackbeard's rise, but also because he wants to avert all the pointless and senseless bloodshed and loss of life, with failing to stop it his greatest fear. Despite his best efforts, the war is still on the way, worse than ever.
This is a major aspect of Guardians, Wizards, and Kung-Fu Fighters, as it deconstructs the war on Meridian. People die, there's good and bad people on both sides, and all the fighting and death leaves a heavy psychological toll on the characters, especially the Child Soldiers.
As with the Film examples above, several TV series deal with the effects of war on both soldiers and civilians, including Vietnam-era shows China Beach, Tour of Duty, the pilot episode of The Wonder Years (where Winnie's brother dies) and the modern-day Combat Hospital.
The 100 has left almost all its main cast traumatized by the war on the Ground: partly by the things that have happened to them, mostly by the things they've done trying to stay alive.
The A-Team: Murdock gives a nice little 'war is hell' speech in the episode 'The Island'.
'War is hell, Wally Gator, isn't it? We know about hell and we know about war, right?'
He was talking to a baby crocodile, and still made it sound deep. Dwight Schultz is just that awesome!
Band of Brothers: You will cry the day you lose your friends. This one is contrasted with its main theme of a circle of unbreakable friendships.
Harry Welsh also says this to Dick Winters after inquiring about how his (rather minor) ricochet injury is healing.
Blackadder Goes Forth: Otherwise a tongue-in-cheek comedy set in the trenches of WWI, dives into pointedly chilling satire at the end, and ends with the implied death of the entire main cast. Worse, before that, the characters express their extreme fear to each other in the face of inevitable death.
The Crossing: The first scene shows the Continental Army slumping along their line of retreat in bandages, without shoes, bloodied, grimy, sick, and all-in-all in a bad way. Encampment is not where anyone wants to be, and the brutality of battle is quite vividly shown.
Doctor Who:
In 'Remembrance of the Daleks', a Dalek asks one of its human collaborators if he's bothered by selling out his entire race to further his own aims. The collaborator (a veteran of World War II) shrugs and responds with this exact phrase.
The Last Great Time War is said to be this. By the end, it turned the Time Lords into something just as bad as the Daleks, the war itself being described as a kind of Lovecraftian nightmare, forcing the Doctor to kill both sides, Daleks and Time Lords alike — all of themnote . Its effects on the Doctor reverberate through the new series.
Even though he technically saved the Time Lords from extinction, the Time War itself was still bad enough to severely traumatise a man who walks away from beatings, torture and near-death experiences on a near-weekly basis. Yeah, it was that bad. Not to mention that it made Big Bad the Master, who delights in chaos and destruction and, indeed, war, flee in terror.
'The Family of Blood':
Son of Mine calls out the headmaster for teaching his students that War Is Glorious, when they probably won't thank him when they're dying in World War I in the near future. The headmaster retorts that he knows war is unpleasant, from personal experience, but would go back and fight anyways.
Even though they're only fighting scarecrows, the students, as well as John Smith, are horrified at what they're doing as they mow down the Family's army. There's a visible sense of relief when it turns out their enemy was just straw.
In 'The Zygon Inversion', the Twelfth Doctor gives an incredibly moving speech regarding his experiences in the Time War. A villain tells him that he can't understand her war, and he laughs.
The Doctor: I don't understand? Are you kidding? Me? Of course I understand. I mean, do you call this a war, this funny little thing? This is not a war! I fought in a bigger war than you will ever know! I did worse things than you could ever imagine! And when I close my eyes.. I hear more screams than anyone could ever be able to count! And you know what you do with all that pain? Shall I tell you where you put it? You hold it tight, till it burns your hand! And you say this: No one else will ever have to live like this! No one else will ever have to feel this pain! Not on my watch!
Downton Abbey season 2 which is set in World War I.
Matthew: At the front, the men pray to be spared, of course. But if they don't, they pray for a bullet that will kill them cleanly. For many men at the hospital today, that prayer wasn't answered.
At one point, another character asks him what it's like in the trenches. All the sounds of the dinner party they're at goes muted and distant for a moment as he looks stricken, remembering, and then he mutters that he can't talk about it.
The Australian miniseries Gallipoli, released on the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli campaign, is this in spades. Soldiers die in the dozens for an ultimately futile campaign, the Anzacs and Turks come to respect each other but it doesn't stop them from killing each other, often in brutal hand to hand combat. A literal example is when, during one attack, artillery sets fire to scrubs, engulfing attacking troops in flames.
Game of Thrones:
While the war scenes are spectacular, they are also extremely gruesome and brutal. Soldiers getting dismembered and the more heroic characters killing already downed foes are commonplace. This is probably most pronounced in 'Battle of the Bastards', which shows just how brutal it is to fight an army that vastly outnumbers you. Season 7 tops that with the 'The Spoils of War' by introducing a dragon and showing the horror of such beast inflicting it on the battlefield alongside men being butchered like animals and slowly burning to death. Season 8's 'The Long Night' and 'The Bells' really show the horrors of surviving a Zombie Apocalyse and escaping from dragon fire respectively.
Renly invokes this trope after he becomes disgusted with his brother Robert's reminiscing about 'the good old days' of the war. Renly borderline shouts at the King that for the loads of lesser men killed, the women raped, and the bastard or orphaned children — pretty much everyone who is not part of the ruling class actually finds war pretty awful. Of course, this makes him a bit of a hypocrite considering that later he decides to start a war to usurp the crown rather then help Ned make sure the throne passes to Stannis with as little bloodshed as possible.
Generation Kill: Most of the main cast realizes this after watching a video of what has happened over the course of the show.
Kamen Rider Build provides a disturbingly realistic portait of civil war breaking out between three city states. It doesn't matter that the focus is mostly on people in Powered Armor's fighting each other, monsters and robots. The story question violence, dehumanization and social darwinism through them. Also, we meet Kazumi Sawatari, who has this as half of his life philosophy note . Unless he has a good reason not to, he will react in a violent manner to anyone, who doesn't understand or acknowledge that War Is Hell.
M*A*S*H: Portrayed generals as bloodthirsty buffoons and emphasised the enemy soldiers' humanity. The military medical setting is ideal for exploring what modern weapons do to human bodies. The doctors themselves are not at home providing medical care, they are overseas working themselves into the ground patching up an endless line of casualties. The doctors at times serve as mouthpieces for the author's and actor's anti-war views.
Hawkeye: War isn't hell. War is war and hell is hell, and of the two, war is worse. Fr. Mulcahy: How do you figure that, Hawkeye? Hawkeye: Easy, father. Tell me, who goes to hell? Fr. Mulcahy: Sinners, I believe. Hawkeye: Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell, but war is chock full of them. Little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for a few brass involved, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.
When a military bomber pilot comes to the camp after being shot down, he brags about the great time he's having for his term of service. Hawkeye, disgusted at this attitude, invites him to help out during a rush of wounded, which included civilians wounded in a bombing. The pilot is profoundly shaken at the end of the session and Hawkeye apologizes for putting him through that, but there was no damn way he was going to let him return to his duties without learning the consequences of war.
Comes up poignantly in Only Fools and Horses of all places. In 'The Russians Are Coming', Granddad gives a bitter speech to Del Boy after the latter seems to not take the threat of war seriously.
Granddad: I remember when I was a little nipper, and I saw all the soldiers marching off to battle. Ohh, yes! It was a glorious sight, alright. Del Boy: Yeah, I bet all them spears and chariots must've stirred the blood, mustn't they? Granddad: My brother George was at Passchendaele. Half a million allied troops died there, all for five miles of mud! I was at Kings Cross Station when his regiment come home after the Armistice. Most of them was carried off the train. I saw men with limbs missing, blind men, men who couldn't breathe properly because their lungs had been shot to bits by mustard gas. While the nation celebrated, they was hidden away in big, grey buildings - far from the public gaze! (chokes back tears) I mean, courage like that could put you right off your victory tea, couldn't it? (Beat)They promised us homes fit forheroes.They give usheroes fit for homes.
The Outer Limits (1995): In 'Gettysburg', Nicholas Prentice sent Vince Chance and Andy Larouche to the eve of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. Prentice's hope is to convince Andy that there is no glory in any war so that he will not assassinate the U.S. President at a ceremony marking the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address on November 19, 2013. Andy eventually learns his lesson, though at the cost of his life.
The Pacificnote : This show is worse. Made brutally clear by Euguene Sledge's father, who tries one last attempt to persuade his son from enlisting:
'The worst thing about treating those combat boys from The Great War wasn't that they had their flesh torn; it was that they had their souls torn out. I don't want to look into your eyes someday..and see no spark, no love, no..no life. That would break my heart.'
Revolution: Episode 11 has this trope as its premise, with the air strikes systemically wiping out entire rebel camps.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: The Terminator franchise always describes the fight against the machines as a war but it was this show which really hammered this point home. Derek, Sarah, John, and Cameron were starting to crack by season 2.
Spooks: 'War is shit. Anyone who says otherwise has never been in one.' Said by the episode's antagonist, who happens to be a well-decorated Major.
Star Trek:
Star Trek: The Original Series: The episode 'A Taste of Armageddon' centered on two planets involved in a 'clean' war lasting centuries, where computers played out virtual battles, and the people on each side were executed to match the results. When the Enterprise gets caught up in it, Kirk destroys the war computers, pointing out that war is supposed to be Hell, so that people will avoid it. The fear of a real war scares the planets into peace talks.
Star Trek: The Next Generation: Introduced The Cardassians during ' The Wounded'. It gave Miles O'Brien the backstory of having participated in a bloody planetside battle during which one of his best friends was killed, and he was forced to kill to save himself.
O'Brien: I don't hate you, Cardassian. I hate what I became, because of you.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: As the only Star Trek series which showed a long time war (the Dominion War) the show often ventured into this with episodes like 'Nor the Battle to the Strong' and 'The Siege of AR-558'. It also showed the lasting consequences on the psyche, such as a loss of humanity and PTSD. The latter episode was directed by a Vietnam veteran, and it shows.
The most striking was when the war was over. Captain Sisko, Admiral Ross and Chancellor Martok are standing on Cardassia Prime. Martok has brought a barrel of bloodwine to celebrate defeating the Dominion. But Sisko and Ross pour their drinks on the ground, saying that while they are glad the fighting is over they will not toast over the bodies of dead Cardassian civilians that had just launched an uprising against the Dominion.
Xena: Warrior Princess: For all its campiness, this show never shied away from showing the terrible effect of war.
Dino Attack RPG went into this terrain near the end. Granted, the first few acts involved an over-the-top villain who unleashed Chaos all over the city, characters going on bizarre shenanigans, a campy sub-plot about a psychotic agent who decided to kill everyone with the slightest idealistic views, and a man named French Fries. But near the end, by which point many of the players had grown (the RPG having gone for six years) and their writing improved it got awfully dark for an RPG inspired by a short-lived LEGO Line of all things. Again, this technically depends on the writer, but to name some specific examples:
Atton Rand primarily strove for realism in his later posts starting with the Adventurers' Island arc- which gradually came to be written with this line of thought. He even had the character of Kate Bishop- a young, innocent teenager really not cut out for working on the battlefield- and if anything is ultimately broken by the war.
Additionally he introduced the majority of the majority of the RPG's medical characters. Naturally he was usually the one who spent a great deal of time during battles focusing on the general stress of working in a hospital in the middle of a warzone (going so far as to write an in-depth description of the medical staff performing surgery for a collapsed lung and internal bleeding).
He also ended his posts on a rather bleak note compared to the more optimistic views of the other players, writing posts focusing on how totally messed up his characters are psychologically as a result of the war.
PeabodySam killed off most of his main cast in the final battle, just to prove that Anyone Can Die. Although he only barely touched upon this in the RPG itself, preferring to write a more Bittersweet Ending in comparison to Atton's Downer Ending, he has confirmed that a handful of the survivors will suffer from PTSD, depression, or other such problems in the years following the war.
that guy from that show exemplified this trope through numerous characters he introduced. Pharisee was forever hardened by his exposure to the more horrible acts committed during the war between the Crusaders and Black Falcons. Solomon Koplowitz was a philosophy professor turned Knight In Sour Armor after witnessing firsthand the horrors of war between ninja and samurai. Carl Lutsky was driven to insanity in the days after finding himself promoted to the position of commander in the Dino Attack war.
Warhammer might just as well be the full extent of this trope in tabletop game form. Especially its Darker and Edgier/Up to Eleven/Recycled In Space form, Warhammer 40,000. See their own pages for the awful details. 'In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war', indeed.
Personified by Szuriel, Horseman of War, in Pathfinder. Gorum represents the glory of war, Torag strategy, Iomedae just causes, and Moloch discipline. Szuriel, on the other hand, is war at its worst. Essentially a Psycho for Hire with divine powers, she represents genocide, societal collapse, and war crimes on a grand scale, using war to traumatise mortals, harvest souls, and hasten the apocalypse.
Most of the games in The World of Darkness tend to glamorize violence, intentionally or not. Wraith: The Oblivion, on the other hand..doesn't. It really hammers home the horrific, pointless nature of war, and the two books dealing with the World Wars (The Great War and especiallyCharnel Houses of Europe) may be the bleakest things ever written by White Wolf.
BattleTech originally started as a state of low warfare between the five Successor States after the collapse of the Star League and the resulting chaos left them too shell-shocked to consider anything further. That changed after the reintroduction of lost technologies, and in the ensuing decades the setting saw a steady increase in destruction until the Word of Blake Jihad, which featured rampant destruction and suffering on a scale not seen for three centuries. Warships razed surface troops, chemical weapons were used on civilians, and entire planets were rendered permanently uninhabitable from bioweapon attacks and nuclear bombardments.
In Twilight: 2000, World War III has destroyed civilization while resolving nothing. The players are all soldiers who were in the last battles of the war, trying to survive and perhaps begin picking up the pieces.
Angels 2200 has its plot built around this, with verydireconsequences.
Gone with the Blastwave
West: Am I the only one here without a death wish? Crosshairs: Yes.
The Green Eyed Sniper is partly focused on war and its consequences. None of the characters enjoy war: Shanti is known to hate war (and soldiers); Blitz hates violence in all forms; and Sekhmet, although a wanted war criminal, claims to be fed up with war.
The Order of the Stick has a speech here about this given to Haley regarding Xykon's imminent attack on Azure City.
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 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: 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, especially as they were at bronze age levels of technology.
In the sequel to The Salvation War, Pantheocide, we get 'treated' to the angelic army being hit with a nuclear initiation. The description of the results is chilling..
The Great War: One of the main points of the series, as millions of people die in an almost pointless conflict. Encapsulated by the Catchphrase, 'This is modern war' whenever some new and horrible way for soldiers to kill each other was deployed, such as Deadly Gas.
Kickassia presents a humorous version of this trope, with various incidents happening during the 'war':
The Nostalgia Chickruns out of coffee, loses her mind, and joins a pack of coyotes.
Rob Walker (the cameraman) turns amputation into a Running Gag, once having an arm cut off so that he would be symetrical.
8 Bit Mickey takes to wearing a necklace made of human ears - despite there being no fatalities in the war.
Braghav wandered off into the desert.. and returned with a penguin.
At one point, most of the cast realizes that they are all humanitarians.. despite a buffet being available at the hotel.
In the end, when all is said and done.. Rob realizes that he left the lens cap on.
The Lady Voltigeur shows a lot of this. In fact, a major element of the novel is showing the horrors of the war.
Nathalie and Claire repeatedly say and admit that the war has brought nothing but pain and anguish for them with Nathalie being more vocal and aggressive when saying it aloud.
Reinhard also shows and says hints that connects him with the war during his past, just by the way that he sounded when he said that he did not want to remember being a part of the war, people ought to believe that the war had been hell for him.
In Spectral Shadows we have Harrison James, who would wake up in the middle of the night from nightmares, resulting in all the horrors he witnessed as a soldier during Chikyu's Second Great War.
RWBY:
The Great War in RWBY's history was as terrible as it sounds. One hundred years of political and cultural tension erupted into ten years of brutal conflict between the alliances of Mistral and Atlas against Vale and Vacuo. Countless soldiers died in battle and just as many villages were lost to Grimm attacks while all of their capable fighters were drafted in the war. Humanity came perilously close to extinction until the final battle in Vacuo.
General Ironwood and Professor Ozpin do not agree on how to handle threats of war and terrorism. Ironwood throws military might at problems whereas Ozpin prefers investigation before making a move. Glynda mentions that Ozpin has experience everyone else lacks and he is implied to be unusually ancient, probably having lived through Remnant's last war of 80 years ago. Although Ironwood thinks Ozpin is prepping his students for war, Ozpin is actually hoping the kids never have to fight one.
Ironwood: Do you honestly believe your children can win a war?
When war does come, it is as horrible as imagined. Sweet Penny's accidental death starts off a massive invasion that ends with Yang losing an arm and her fighting spirit, Pyrrha losing her life in a fight to the death, and Ozpin missing in action. The school has to be abandoned and these are just the opening shots of the war.
World War II: a central theme of the series as millions of people are killed in the war and untold suffering is unleashed on the world.
Western Animation
Universal Cartoon Studios productions
Wing Commander Academy - As much as could be portrayed in a 1990s Saturday morning cartoon, the series is not at all shy about the death and occasional moral ambiguity of war, on both sides.
Probably the best episode for this is one where a kilrathi pilot crashlands on a paradise planet and holds the female doctor there hostage. She seems to have been taken over with Stockholm syndrome when Blair and Maniac find her, and eventually after stopping them from fighting one another she convinces them to let the Kilrathi leave, after having him promise not to reveal the beautiful planet's location so it may survive the war unscathed. Blair and Maniac agree to let him go, and he flies off..then they find notes implying that when she was treating his wounds she was also experimenting on him, and has bioengineered him without his knowledge into being a walking viral factory, who will die upon returning to Kilrah and spread the disease throughout their homeworld, wiping out the entire Kilrathi race. Blair and even Maniac call her out on this insane plan, then take off to shoot him down. They both feel pretty crappy about it afterwards.
Exo Squad also wasn't shy at all, depicting people dying on all sides, civilians being starved, 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 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. The heroes at one point find a refugee camp, where people are left with few possessions and in cramped conditions, trying to buy passage into Ba Sing Se, one of the few safe cities. 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 blindly seeks revenge.
And this is before we get to The Tale of Iroh in the Tales of Ba Sing Se episode, which shows the quiet but powerful sadness of a father losing his son to the war. It hammers home the message of the inevitable personal consequences of war, and why it should not be entered into lightly. If there's a way to show this trope responsibly in a kid's show, Avatar: The Last Airbender is probably the best example that you could possibly find. It even won a Peabody Award for its responsible, yet brutal depiction of war, along with its Character Development.
The word 'Hell' is almost never allowed on children's television. But Histeria! used it in the popular recollection of William T. Sherman's famous quote.
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 Critters. Features some Nightmare Fuel-inducing rotoscoped animation.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars does this a lot to contrast itself to the micro series which was War Is Glorious. First shown in “Rookies” where a group of clones tries to retake an outpost.. only two survive besides Rex and Cody. It's really hammered in hard during the Kaminoian Invasion where 99, a defective Clone, is killed. And finally in the Umbara Arc? It's so hellish (and the Jedi General is evil and planning to defect), the Clones are tricked to killing each other.
Recent Transformers series such as Animated, Prime and the live-action films portray the Autobot-Decepticon war as this. This went back as far as Transformers: The Movie, where a single battle saw the termination of numerous recognizable faces (albeit because Hasbro wanted to remove the entire existing cast to make way for new toys.) The oldest example of this trope in play in the Transformers franchise comes from the G1 episode 'The Golden Lagoon.' Beachcomber finds a tranquil glen filled with beautiful plants and animals, and also a pool filled with 'electrum,' a golden liquid that makes any Transformer coated in it invulnerable. Naturally, the Decepticons end up finding it, and they fight for control. In the end, Beachcomber is left looking forlornly at the glen, now utterly destroy, and gives a mournful 'we won.'
Parodied on an American Dad! where Steve becomes a Shell-Shocked Veteran after spending the weekend with a group Vietnam War recreationists. The episode is a parody of war films.
In a scene from 'The Procrastinators' from The Amazing World of Gumball, Gumball and Darwin are bored while having lunch so they decide to have a Food Fight. They sent their peas to war against their sweetcorn, a massacre ensues and the survivors are bombed by a sausage. The two of them are traumatised by the whole thing.
Gumball: That was nowhere near as fun as I thought it would be.
Steven Universe has both this trope, as espoused by Garnet and Greg, and War Is Glorious, as espoused by Pearl. Pearl enthusiastically recounts the courageous actions Rose Quartz and the other Crystal Gems undertook to save Earth, while Garnet stoically points out that every weapon they're walking past is one of a gem who died in the fighting. But Greg explains it to his son in the plainest terms.
Greg: There's no such thing as a 'good' war.
What little we see of the Homeworld Gems' point of view is this trope full force. Many of their veterans have some form of PTSD and recount heavy losses on their side.
Shows up in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic of all places: The episode The Cutie Remark succinctly conveys this in an alternative timeline where King Sombra has conquered half of Equestria with his slave army and all of Equestria is mobilized in total war just to hold him off. Half the cast have given up their dreams and work in factories to keep the war machine running and the other half are hardened front line soldiers. Rainbow Dash in particular has a chunk missing out of her ear, has a scar across one of her eyes and has replaced one of her wings with a metal prosthesis.
Although it keeps the amount of violence to what is acceptable for a children's series, Boo Boom! The Long Way Home still makes no attempt to hide how awful World War II was, and war in general is. For starters, the war is what landed the protagonist, Boo-Boom, in his current situation; being seperated from his parents during an air attack. As he and his friends travel Italy, it’s shown numerous times how everyday life for normal citizens who never wanted anything to do with the war is turned upside down because of it.
Even appears in the Recess episode, 'The Trial.' In it, Spinelli is accused of throwing a rock in a dirt clod war, and Mikey presents his view on the matter. In Mikey's narrative, the dirt clod war landscape resembles World War I, with the kids falling injured and Spinelli calling a time-out to tend to the wounded. It was then when Randall threw a dirt clod at Spinelli anyway and angered her. Although Mikey didn't actually see Randall get hit with the rock, he concludes that 'war is not a game.' The truth of the matter is that Randall hit himself in the head with the rock.
In Milo Murphy's Law, season two opens with sentient pistachio plants having taken over the world. When Milo and friends (accompanied by Phineas and Ferb) go to rescue the people of Danville, the Pistachion leader Derek sends a deploys a giant Pistachion to crush them. But when the creature looks at the carnage surrounding him, he realizes all his time locked away has made him nearly forget compassion. Over Derek's aggravated objections, the giant grabs a Bindle Stick and vows to Walk the Earth. Notably, he's the only Pistachion to object in any way to their war with the humans.