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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330

u/Independent_Plum2166 Sep 11 '26

As does Obi-Wan.

163

u/guymine123 Sep 11 '26

"Because of Obi-Wan?"

48

u/Champ_5 Sep 11 '26

Because of what you've done!

29

u/scully2828 Sep 11 '26

because of the implication

3

u/AlexRenquist Sep 12 '26

Are you going to hurt these droids?

1

u/BleedSparta Sep 11 '26

🗣️“For the Republic!”

42

u/TanSkywalker Sep 11 '26

It's all Obi-Wan's fault Anakin started doing it!

9

u/Obi-Wan-Nikobiii Sep 11 '26

Leave me out of this!

3

u/James_Solomon Sep 11 '26

I don't want to hear about Obi-Wan

3

u/June_The_Jedi Sep 11 '26

Obi-Wan does it in the animated move, there are also no set “rules of war” in Star Wars. Different groups all have their own rules but there is no galactic war laws.

5

u/Free_For__Me Sep 11 '26

Perfidy being a war crime doesn’t mean it’s necessarily illegal. Terms like “war crime” or “crime against humanity” almost never have clear-cut legal definitions, because these are terms that can’t possibly be defined wholly within one system of government or its legal system. 

OP’s main point isn’t that what Anakin (or Obi-Wan) did was against galactic law, it was that it was wrong.   Both morally, as well as strategically. 

3

u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871 Sep 11 '26

One of those times he was fooling a guy who kidnapped a town of people to sell into slavery. Nobody cares if you violate the Geneva Convention when dealing with a pirate selling people into slavery.

1

u/Deto Sep 15 '26

Is it always to droids, though? The show kind of treats them like just dumb machines (not like, living entities where morality applies). Way to get around the whole 'they're killing a bunch of people?' in a kids show I guess.