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/TheLeechKing466 Sep 11 '26

TBF, he calls out Obi Wan and Anakin on it at the same time “A war crime would be faking a surrender, which you and your chuckle fuck of an apprentice have done, REPEATEDLY.”

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u/PandaPocketFire Sep 11 '26

He calls him a chucklefuck?

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u/TheLeechKing466 Sep 11 '26

He refers to Anakin as the chucklefuck

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u/PandaPocketFire Sep 11 '26

I get that. My confusion is of him using the word chucklefuck in an animated series

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u/TheLeechKing466 Sep 11 '26

It was an image dub over of the jedi council scene from episode 3: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=31Idhcu2jUI&ra=m

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u/PandaPocketFire Sep 11 '26

Lol... That makes far more sense. Thanks.