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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278

u/Jai137 Sep 11 '26

007 First Light has fake surrender as a game mechanic

77

u/Grimpatron619 Sep 11 '26

tbf its not in war. i'd struggle to find a morally dubious side to lying to a bunch of lunatic global terrorists to get the upper hand. its not like spectre would care if the shoe was on the other foot.

17

u/BlatantConservative Sep 11 '26

Also if it was in war, James Bond would be a not uniformed spy/combatant and therefore already inherently comitting perfidy. The Geneva and Hauge Conventions specifically class spies as someone war crime law does not apply to and they can be executed on the spot.

7

u/I_Tell_You_Wat Sep 11 '26

..and that's the thing. A lot of the time in war, you think your side is morally right and the other side is morally wrong. Russians think they're deNazifying Ukraine or they're just liberating Russian terroritory. Ukrainians think they're defending their home. Objectively, the Ukranians are right. But that's not the point - it's to prevent mass killing that doesn't need to happen.

11

u/Grimpatron619 Sep 11 '26

but this isnt irl. its the fictional james bond universe where spectre are all lunatics. theres no moral quandry

1

u/BleedSparta Sep 11 '26

Easy solution for fascists 💁🏾‍♂️

Pass the Patriot Act, Designate everyone an “enemy combatant” whether a citizen on domestic soil or a foreign freedom fighter/insurgent overseas. Suspend haves corpus and deny them access to legal systems indefinitely.

If anyone complains to The Hague, dismantle the International Criminal Court (ICC), ban their judges from your land and sanction their bank accounts from the international financial system

No more War Crime ✅