r/TopCharacterTropes • u/AporiaParadox • Sep 11 '26

Hated Tropes "Good guys" committing perfidy (fake surrender) and it's treated as a clever heroic ploy instead of a war crime or something morally dubious

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  1. Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Anakin pretends to surrender to the enemy multiple times during the Clone Wars. And no, it's not used to indicate that Anakin is falling to the Dark Side, other characters like Obi-Wan do it too.
  2. The Iliad. The Trojan Horse was a real dick move, a fake surrender compounded by a fake peace offering, followed by a massacre. I get that it was a different time, but still, most modern adaptations just treat it as a cool thing. One thing I'll give Nolan's The Odyssey credit for is that Odysseus recognizes that what his "clever plot" was wrong.

Perfidy is a serious war crime, because morality aside, in exchange for one victory, you're dooming all of your allies who might want to legitimately surrender in the future because now the enemy is just going to execute them, not to mention that now the enemy won't surrender to you and will just fight harder.

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u/Basic_Dingo6487 Sep 11 '26

I dont think Greeks or Troyans are good guys in the Iliad.

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u/Arctic_The_Hunter Sep 11 '26

And even if they were, Odysseus is very much meant to be morally ambiguous, to the point that the Odyssey ends with Athena (goddess of everything he’s good at basically) having to show up in-person to tell everybody he’s chill.

The Greek concept of a hero was basically just someone who did incredibly impressive deeds, usually with the Gods’ favor, not someone who was actually heroic by today’s standards.

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u/[deleted] Sep 11 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/MyPhoneIsNotChinese Sep 11 '26

I mean the whole point of Heracles was him having to redeem himself after his "anger bursts"

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u/NoodleIskalde Sep 11 '26

Weren't they not even his fault? Wasn't it Hera being a petty child?

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u/Tahxeol Sep 11 '26

Oedipus was punished for a crime that was prophecised and that he did everything in his power to prevent. Guilt never mattered

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u/MixAmbitious307 Sep 11 '26

This... and remember the Dinsey movie?

Let's just say that Meg didn't have a "happy ever after" in mythology.

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u/firefly081 Sep 11 '26

That, and Zeus and Hera were not couple goals. Thundercock McWhoreson couldn't stop shagging anything that moved, and often things that didn't, while Hera unleashed her wrath on the parties not responsible, like the woman that was duped, or the offspring.

Also, Hades wasn't necessarily evil, he just drew the short straw.

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u/MixAmbitious307 Sep 11 '26

Indeed. Hades was probably one of the chillest gods. If I had to pick a "big bad" in Greek myths, I would Say Typhon.

But probably the most apt would be Zeus himself

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u/PlusMortgage Sep 11 '26

Hades is totally the chillest God.

Dude is just doing his work ruling the Underworld, no rivalry with other Gods, no meltdown curling mortals or messy affairs.

Biggest scandal about him is kidnapping Persephone, which was totally acceptable by their culture and in some versions even more acceptable and totally Zeus fault (agreed to Hades marrying Persephone but "forgot" to tell it to Demeter), and even then they are easily the most functional Greek Gods couple.

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u/DemocracyIsGreat Sep 11 '26

So functional that she only stays there half the year because she is forced to as a result of eating a few pomegranite pips.

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u/PlusMortgage Sep 12 '26

It's been a while since I read the myth, but doesn't she have to return to the surface every year because mommy Demeter is having a melt down in her absence and nothing can grow on earth (winter) ?

Yes, she is bound to Hell because she ate local food, but you could also argue her trips are more because of the mother in law from Hell (hey) than a non loved husband.

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u/DemocracyIsGreat Sep 12 '26

She was held captive, with Demeter in response causing eternal winter until she got her daughter back. Zeus orders Hades to give Persephone back. Per the Homeric Hymn to Demeter:

"When luck-bringing Hermes came, swift messenger from my father the Son of Cronos and the other Sons of Heaven, bidding me come back from Erebus that you might see me with your eyes and so cease from your anger and fearful wrath against the gods, I sprang up at once for joy; but he secretly put in my mouth sweet food, a pomegranate seed, and forced me to taste against my will."

Edit:

Also "...he bore me away, all unwilling, beneath the earth: then I cried with a shrill cry. All this is true, sore though it grieves me to tell the tale."

Hades is a rapist and kidnapper, which is to be expected from the Greek gods.

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u/TheDikaste Sep 11 '26

I wish more adaptations remembered Typhon isn't simply a giant roaring monster. In the myths, he's the ultimate enemy of the Olympians, far worse than even the Titans, so feared nearly all the gods fled except Zeus (and Athena in some versions) upon seeing him and even then Zeus was still terrified and Typhon gave the gods the Thragg treatment. And also, he's no mindless beast, he's intelligent and vicious. He directly tells Zeus he's going to torture the gods and rape the female ones after he's done. Dude was the worst of the worst.

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u/MixAmbitious307 Sep 11 '26

Didn't they made a sort of "crossover" (sorry for the modern term), by having Greek Gods turning into animals while escaping, and "becoming" the Egyptian phanteon?

And yes, Typhon was really such a menace. Media should drop Hades as the villain and bring Typhon.

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u/TheDikaste Sep 11 '26

In some versions at least yeah. Except Zeus, whom he kept to torture him, the other gods fled, he caught them, brutalized them then they fled even further all the way to Egypt and turned into animals to hide and became known as the Egyptian Gods.

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u/ZealousidealComb7891 Sep 11 '26

Didn't he cut off Zeus' leg muscles, and Hermes had to steal them back ?

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u/Takamurarules Sep 11 '26

Actually there’s just as many myths and titles of Zeus doing the right thing as there are of him being a bastard. For example: He’s the one who punishes Tantalus and Ixion for their crimes. He also willingly grants Artemis the status of being “untamable”.

Even his cheating is explained as him being a god of creation. The Greeks believed that creation comes from the man so therefore, Zeus has the urge to make things.

But I digress. Most gods work on this double edged sword depending on the myth. Zeus is the leader so his faults are more highlighted than others. Modern media like God of War don’t help either.

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u/PenguinSebs Sep 11 '26

I don’t blame Heracles for Meg because Hera mind-controlled hin

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u/ember13140 Sep 11 '26

Or his wife and kids

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u/AzzyDreemur3 Sep 11 '26

That one wasn't his fault

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u/Hungry-Detail9945 Sep 11 '26

The music teacher?

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u/AzzyDreemur3 Sep 11 '26

The wife and kids, if I remember correctly Hera made him do that

And the second wife put a coat made of acid on him

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u/TheDikaste Sep 11 '26

Yeah, Hera absolutely hated his guts and used her powers to make him go insane and murder his family with his bare hands.

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u/Hungry-Detail9945 Sep 11 '26

Alright but why you say "that one" caused is implied that ot specify only one which the question above your comment while not including the other. (Sorry if this was'nt the definition cause english is not my first language)

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u/AzzyDreemur3 Sep 11 '26

I haven't heard about music teacher so can't say anything about that

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u/Zurulean Sep 11 '26

Iirc, he constantly berates and hits his students for the slightest mistake. Herakles isn't that good at controlling his strength, so his lyre play is bad, so he is hit often. At some point he snaps and hits his teacher back, but because he is a frail old man and Herakles a Demigod, the teacher dies instantly.

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u/klatnyelox Sep 11 '26

The phrase "that one" is referring to that one incident, not that one kill.

He killed his wife and kids as part of the same event, that whole event wasnt his fault.

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u/dinnerthief Sep 11 '26

That "one" can be rephrased in this case to "that particular incident". Doesnt necessarily mean a singular person

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u/Own_Trip_5986 Sep 11 '26

Actually it was a coat with the blood of some centaur who wanted her for something idk

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u/InternalCapable5286 Sep 11 '26

It was the blood of the Hydra he had killed iirc.

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u/Chaz-Natlo Sep 11 '26

A centaur tried to kidnap Herc's wife. Herc shot the Centaur with an arrow dipped in Hydra venom, poisoning the Centaur to death. The Centaur convinced the wife to make a coat from his now Hydra poisoned flesh, and to give the coat to Herc if she felt he was ever going to be unfaithful. She did and the poison on the coat was so intense it would have killed a normal man, but since Herc was a Demigod, it just made him suffer unceasingly.

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u/Own_Trip_5986 Sep 11 '26

Oh yes, that was it, haven’t thought about that myth in an age, I just remembered it was blood and a centaur who convinced her

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u/Silviana193 Sep 11 '26

Or Chiron

Or why he is a berserker in Fate

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u/Nogatron Sep 11 '26

And don't forget he became a god and married his step sister

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u/ProfessionalOven2311 Sep 11 '26

Yeah, "heroic" is very subjective by the times. And even then, Odysseus would've been considered what we can an anti-hero, since he used edgy underhanded tactics rather than honorably giving a fair fight.

Other Greek heroes also used a little trickery every now and then, but that was Odysseus's whole thing

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u/Dragonfire723 Sep 11 '26

It's ok for a man with impressive deeds to be a thinker- even Heracles, who'd rather just beat you to death, was something of a thinker- it's just that Odysseus wasn't "a thinker" or "a little bit of a trickster". If you remove the tricks from Odysseus you have flat fuckin nothing.

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u/deaseb Sep 11 '26

He was the only dude who could string his bow and he was killing it at sports too. 

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u/Dragonfire723 Sep 11 '26

Even his bow is a fucking trick, it's easier to string a recurve sitting down than standing up due to how you have to string it, but the suitors would'nt know that and would've fucked it up.

Odysseus is strong, yes, but he decided that if he isn't pantsing someone every day he's dead to himself.

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u/deaseb Sep 11 '26

The translation I read doesn't imply trickery directly. But even so, at one of the islands (the Phaeacians?) he participates in their athletics competition and crushes them without deception. He's not just strong, he's meant to be physically exceptional.

And yes that is in addition to his addiction to lying, which is undeniable.

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u/Dragonfire723 Sep 11 '26

Oh yeah, that's kinda what makes his lying so bad to the Greeks- he could just crush you in a battle of the mind or body, but he'd rather run circles around you until you're dizzy. It's almost a waste of him.

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u/ZealousidealComb7891 Sep 11 '26

Yeah, but that's true of all the heroes when competing with regular people. He's less strong then some of the others heroes at Troy, it's just that none of them where around the bow.

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u/coatimundos Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26

The Odyssey and the Illiad definitely frame Odysseus as heroic. It’s just that they were operating on bro de age morals.

Edit: Bronze Age

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u/Bwm89 Sep 11 '26

I'm pretty sure you meant bronze, but my brain frantically translated bro de age into the bro age in my brain, which is fairly hilarious in my opinion

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u/gilnockie Sep 11 '26

lol yeah i was doing a weird french thing in my head:

bro de age..."bro of the times"

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u/QuixoticCoyote Sep 11 '26

It was the best of times, it was the bro-ist of times.

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u/Ketheres Sep 11 '26

I suppose it works that way too

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u/Thejollyfrenchman Sep 12 '26

If you want to be specific it would be bro des âges.

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u/Pkrudeboy Sep 11 '26

Our age of bro is ending.

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u/Somnambulist815 Sep 11 '26

My bro is coming home

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u/Visible-Task-2798 Sep 11 '26

Not again brodysseus

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u/coatimundos Sep 11 '26

Oh yeah I love these bro age

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u/ZealousidealComb7891 Sep 11 '26

Not all the stories about the heroes paint them in a good light even by their own standards.

The whole "perfect innocent hero" thing is more modern.

A lot of them get punished, even if temporarily for some stuff they do, and they get less punishment then their friends doing the same thing who's parents where not as high in the godly hierarchy.

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u/Ghost_Of_Malatesta Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26

Different set of morals entirely. There wasn't a good bad dichotomy like we understand today. 

More along the lines of he had a role in their society to fill with corresponding virtues to embody, and filled that amazingly well and by doing that was a great person 

Edit: spelling 

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u/_whatever_wherever Sep 11 '26

I beleive he is referred to as the "lord of tricks"

Because he uses clever and often underhanded tactics to win, something seen as virtuous to the Greeks, but dishonourable to later cultures like the Romans

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u/KlingoftheCastle Sep 11 '26

The Greek concept of a hero not matching our own is perfectly exemplified in Achilles.  Dude sulks about losing his sex slave by asking his goddess mother to curse his own army and sits out the battle until his gay lover is killed wearing his armor

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u/likeabosstroll Sep 11 '26

I feel just generally the concept of hero was like that pre-Chivalry. Beowulf does all this crazy shit, and in the end his tribe, the Geats, are just like, “that’s nothing, any normal person does that all the time”

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u/bonniemick Sep 11 '26

Doesn't Odysseus throw Hector's baby son from the wall, too?

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u/reluctantseal Sep 11 '26

Also, while Odysseus was generally considered a hero, the Roman's often portrayed Ulysses as underhanded and conniving. It's not like his strategies were always held in high regard or considered honorable.

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u/Matty8744 Sep 13 '26

That's more because Rome identified with Troy and claimed to be descended from them in the aftermath if the Trojan war. It was less that they were significantly more critical of lying and more that the trick wasn't done for their benefit like the Greeks would view it.

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u/Own_Watercress_8104 Sep 11 '26

The ideal Odysseus represents is not heroism. It is first and foremost, curiosity, something Nolan missed entirelly. The mermaids scene is really badly communicated, Odysseus wants to know what no mortal is allowed to, because he values knownledge above all else. In the movie, he feels more like a frat bro saying "dude, wouldn't it be mad cool?"

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u/gonzo12321 Sep 11 '26

Their gods were also not pious. They were sometimes good but mostly deeply flawed and a reflection of mankind failings.

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u/schrodingers_bra Sep 11 '26

I mean, in the original story, it was Athena that gave them instructions to build the horse in the first place.

The Trojan War was very much a battle of the gods as well as the humans. The movie kind of confuses things by saying that the Greeks were working against the will of the gods.

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u/TheDikaste Sep 11 '26

Yep, the closest to an actual heroic one was Perseus.

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u/ThatMerri Sep 11 '26

Even within Greek mythological standards, wasn't Odysseus' whole character archetype supposed to be the "clever bastard" sort who's whole stance as being morally ambiguous is an intentional feature? Like, he's the one who's sharper than others, using strategy and trickery to get an edge, where it's seen as him outsmarting his foes rather than just being deceitful?

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u/LostExile7555 Sep 11 '26

It also wasn't technically Perfidy. They even left somebody to explicitly tell the Trojans not to take the horse because it was an offering for Athena and not them, it just happened to be really effective reverse psychology with the Trojans saying "Screw you! We're taking it!"

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u/HappyMerlin Sep 11 '26

If I remember my ancient literature right, that part didn’t exist in the original greek versions, but was rather added afterwards in the roman „fanfic“.

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u/haubowtdemoshon Sep 11 '26

I don’t think we know whether that part was added later. Isn’t the epic by Homer where the horse actually appears lost to us?

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u/Fenix00070 Sep 11 '26

Iliou persis Is almost completely Lost, yes. We have 10 original verses and a couple of summaries.

We have a Roman retelling of the events in Virgil's Aeneid, so maybe that's what the commenter was referencing. But the dedicati in of the horse to Athena predates the Epic.

Also calling the Aeneid "Roman Fanfiction" Is highly reductive to both the scope of the work and its true pourpose

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u/GobboTheJojo Sep 11 '26

Yeah that doesn't make sense to call Virgil's telling fanfic when Homer isn't the creator to the myth he simply pulled a Brother's Grimm/Charles Perault by documenting the most common tellings of his time into a coherent poem.

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u/TheSuperBunny Sep 11 '26

Homeros most probably didn't exist in general.
And the first written version is from the 6th century bce after the tyrant Pisistratos commissioned it for the Pan-Hellenic games.

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u/ZealousidealComb7891 Sep 11 '26

But Homer, like teh Grimms, was using his own people's stories... Virgil was using the stories of a people his own people where simply fans of, to try to make it seem like they where part of the stories they fanboyed over. It's basically just a self insert of a whole nation.

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u/GobboTheJojo Sep 11 '26

Greeks and Romans had pretty similar cultures, if not the Romans being a continuation of Greek culture. The lands of the Odyssey were predicted to be in places of Italy and Sicily. The big point of Virgil's Aeneid was to connect the two cultures with the other common theory that refugees from Troy became the Romans. You can't even say Aeneas was Virgil's Gary Stu because he already existed in the stories surrounding the Illiad.

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u/ZealousidealComb7891 29d ago

Heh... if we take teh Romans as "a continuation of Greek culture" we might as well take most of Europe as "a continuation of greco-roman culture". And that's witohut taking into account the guys actually claiming to be a direct continuation, like the Kaisers and Tzars.

But hey, Rome was definitely the ur-ascended-fanboy, and certainly did their part in spreading the culture they lifted off the greeks after CONQUERING them.

But that doesn't change the fact that they where outsiders that took their cosplay as far as possible.

As for Aeneas being an existing character... that's how most fan fiction works.

And the original stories using places in Italy is about as good of an argument as including Ethiopians in the same culture because of Andromeda.

...

BTW, this isn't meant as an insult to roman culture... they did copy a pretty cool culture, and obv. brought their own spins on it. Doesn't change that they where the original weebs.

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u/ZealousidealComb7891 Sep 11 '26

It's true purpose makes it worse then fanfic... it's was fanboyism driven paid propaganda...

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u/RSquared Sep 11 '26

Man, calling the Aeneid a fanfic is akin to calling The Divine Comedy one. 

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u/Rezkel Sep 11 '26

I would absolutely call The Divine Comedy Christian fanfiction.

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u/zhibr Sep 11 '26

All Greek and Roman myths are fanfics of the earlier songs. That's how myths work.

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u/CaptainObvious_18 Sep 11 '26

Personally I think they’re both fanfiction, but the divine comedy specifically is a self insert.

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u/ZealousidealComb7891 Sep 11 '26

So is the Aeneid, just for the whole roman peoples instead of 1 guy.

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u/Uypsilon Sep 11 '26

The horse is not described in details in Greek sources, so not really.

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u/GobboTheJojo Sep 11 '26

Are you talking about the Aeneid from Virgil?

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u/AfterCommodus Sep 11 '26

Depends heavily on the telling.  That said, when civilizations have harkened back to the war for their founding myths, they overwhelmingly have looked to Hector, Aeneas, and Troy, not Achilles, Agamemnon, and the Aecheans

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u/_whatever_wherever Sep 11 '26

Different cultural values

The Greeks valued cleverness and tricks on the battlefield as much as they did marital prowess

While the Romans vauled a greater emphasis on martial might, so viewed the sorts of tactics Odyssius used as dishonourable

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u/facw00 Sep 11 '26

Yep Odysseus is a clever hero in Homer (though also arrogant to the point it gets his men killed and angers the gods), and dishonorable in Virgil.

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u/Chiron723 Sep 11 '26

Reverse that. He angers the gods which ultimately get his men killed.

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u/Sustentio Sep 11 '26

Marital Prowess? How skilled you are in your marriage?

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u/Nebranower Sep 11 '26

I think the relative strength of your army makes a difference there, too. If your army is often fighting forces as strong or stronger than your own, you're going to value cleverness as a way to even the odds. If your army is the greatest army in the world, then of course you're going to treat getting clever as dishonorable and encourage straight up fights.

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u/Unfair_Pineapple8813 Sep 11 '26

Well, Sparta and Smyrna worshipped Agamemnon. Though, I suspect it was more about him being strong and mighty in battle, than him being honorable or a just king.

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u/Strength-InThe-Loins Sep 11 '26

Please look up A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry's 7 part series on Sparta. Tl;dr fuck Sparta. It's one of the most evil societies to ever exist.

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u/anononobody Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26

I can see the Roman telling to be rooting for Trojans, but Im genuinely curious how the Greek telling of the Illiad wasn't meant for Greeks to be the good guys (or at least neutral)? Like, wouldn't the Mycenaeans or even Trojans just be "people" to Classical Greeks? The original comment sounds like "both sides bad" historical revisionism to me.

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u/_whatever_wherever Sep 11 '26

Because these stories are more often about imparting moral lessons relevant to the culture of the time and change and evolve with each telling

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u/anononobody Sep 11 '26

The moral lesson wouldn't be "the Greeks or Trojans are bad people" though, I would imagine it's more "Achilles's downfall was his pride" etc. So OP's original comment still doesn't make much sense to me.

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u/Gantolandon Sep 11 '26

Romans claimed to be the descendants of Trojans, so you can say they rooted for them a lot.

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u/pineapple_Jeff Sep 11 '26

I mean that's not really a moral judgement, rather because the Trojans were defeated and essentially disappeared from history, leaving a convenient space for other cultures to claim their origins whereas the victorious Achaeans/Greeks still existed at the time and were known by those cultures, thus preventing the cultures from claiming to be their successors?

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u/Radigan0 Sep 11 '26

They did not disappear from history, the city was rebuilt several times and was evidently still around in one form or another at least by the time of Alexander the Great's conquest of the Persian Empire.

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u/its_not_you_its_ye Sep 11 '26

The Iliad also ended before that part. The Trojan horse isn’t in the Iliad

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u/Blimey-Penguin Sep 12 '26

Well, considering OP's other example is Darth Vader

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u/RuafaolGaiscioch Sep 11 '26

Also I’m not sure if perfidy was a forbidden act at that point in history.

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u/EspacioBlanq Sep 11 '26

I think for perfidy to be even a conceivable tactic, it must be dishonorable.

If perfidy was considered a standard option to take, no one would actually spare surrendering soldiers or lower their guard around them and therefore no one would fall for it.

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u/RuafaolGaiscioch Sep 11 '26

True, but also, the Trojan situation isn’t exactly “false surrender” either. It’s just trickery, and ancient war is chock full of trickery.

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u/TheOtherWhiteCastle Sep 11 '26

Heck, the Trojans immediately kill the one person doing the fake surrender in Nolan’s adaptation.

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u/ab_od6851 Sep 11 '26

It is. Theres a reason why older military theorists and thinkers tried so hard to define what counts as perfidy and what counts as a stratagem of war.

Can't have militaries just killing able bodied people everytime they encounter them.

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u/KlingoftheCastle Sep 11 '26

The Trojan Horse also isn’t in the Iliad.  It’s in one of the poems lost to time

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u/natholemewIII Sep 11 '26

That's one of the cool things about the story. It goes out of it's way to show that there are good guys and bad guys on both sides of the conflict

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u/Chat322 Sep 11 '26

Hey, two Greek commanders who had beef over Troy female slaves that resulted in death of actually honorable people are totally the good guys. /s

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u/funnylib Sep 11 '26

Yeah. It’s mythology from more than two thousand years ago, everyone behaves evilly from our perspective. It was “normal” to enslave people then

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u/Howling_Fire Sep 11 '26

Nobody was or were.

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u/RetardedSheep420 Sep 11 '26

yeah lmao they sailed to troy, got lost at sea, stranded on a random island and started slaughtering the population because they thought those were trojans. THEN they left and went to troy

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u/sircraze Sep 11 '26

Also, not sure you can really call the Republic the good guys either.

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u/gingerking87 Sep 11 '26

That's also the point of the entire story "to burn troy is to burn the world entire"

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u/AccomplishedEcho948 Sep 11 '26

This.  The story was clearly a cautionary tale of what happens when Conquerers and Gods get out of hand to influence the events of the mortals and that despite that, you should stand tall and choose the right thing as best as you can.  

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u/Correct-Document-125 Sep 11 '26

The quotation marks are doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

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u/Kelly598 Sep 11 '26

Heroes in Greek Mythology are basically those with half human/half god upbringing. How do people not know it's not equivalent to being a good guy? Heracles is a hero and his story is about doing 12 gruelling jobs for a goddess after HE killed his wife and his children. 

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u/Dinosaurmaid Sep 11 '26

They were examples of behavior good and bad.

Achilles was a mighty warrior brave and skilled and loyal to his friends, personally fighting and killing hector in single combat, 

also he was too proud and refused to fight due to a slight, severely compromising the war effort and leading to Patroclus dying, and later defiled hector's corpse, offending the gods and causing his death by an arrow guided by Apollo.

Hector was fierce and loyal and a steadfast defender of his people, yet did nothing when his brother brought Helena with her, violating several diplomatic and religious rules, being a bystander to the misdeeds of his fellows lead to the fall of his city and his death.

To be fair, it's been a while since I last read it, but I think the point stands.

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u/anjulibai Sep 11 '26

See, and I think they were both supposed to be good guys to the Greeks. They were all just meant to be victims of fate - that's the tragedy from the Greek perspective.

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u/thegreatfireoflondon Sep 12 '26

yeah, the Iliad isn't abouts who's right or who's wrong, nor is it about good versus bad. The Iliad is a story about the horrors of war, and it's consequences, in both the physical and mental sense.

(also it's "Trojans", sorry)