r/TopCharacterTropes • • 10d ago

Characters (funny trope)While their fate is left intentionally vague, with real life historical context we know they’re absolutely fucked.

Ramon from Scary stories to tell in the Dark: Ramon’s a draft dodger of the Vietnam war trying to avoid the same fate as his brother but after he goes through his character arc of becoming a braver person he decides to finally go to Vietnam at the end of the film. The problem is the movies set in 1968 which means they’re still 7 years out from Saigon. While it’s possible he’ll be fine, there is the likelihood he either gets seriously injured or straight up dies.

Agent Mansley from the Iron Giant: Mansley acts as the main antagonist of the film with it coming to head when he steals a five star general’s walkie talkie and orders a nuke to be sent directly to the town to kill the iron giant. We see him getting arrested after this and then he disappears for the remainder of the film. With that being said the movie takes place in the 50s in the peak of McCarthyism/Cold War and he did just commit high treason against the US by launching a literal nuke on American soil. Best case scenario is he gets executed by firing squad outside of city limits and buried in a shallow grave never to be talked about again. Most likely scenario is he gets disappeared by the government and taken to some unknown black site to be tortured by CIA to figure out when he was compromised by the Soviets.

Edit: since so many people have pointed out (some more rudely than others.) that only about 2% of American soldiers died in Vietnam, I decided to add to the original post as to be more accurate. Hopefully this will be enough for my transgressions to be forgiven.

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148

u/ConsciousPatroller 10d ago

Jaguar Paw from Apocalypto (as well as the Mayan raiders).

Although Jaguar Paw manages to survive being hunted down, kills Zero Wolf, and rescues his family, the arrival of the conquistadors means that they're all fucked anyway. The West is coming to the Americas, and they'll all very likely die horrible deaths, either from disease, as slaves or in war.

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u/Soft_Nail_8527 9d ago

Eh by the time the spaniards arrived to the yucatan península, the mayan civilization was on its death trotes (this is why many nowadays arqueological sites were spared, they were covered in jungles and they though they were mountains) and small villages in the jungle survived, it was later down the line that the spaniards see the resources and star what eventually Led to the castellano war

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u/PotatoOnMars 10d ago

Ah yes, the movie where the Spanish time travel and come to the Americas circa… 900 CE?

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u/BlackEastwood 9d ago

1502 allegedly.

-24

u/PotatoOnMars 9d ago

Yet the movie clearly takes place in the Mayan classical period, which collapsed around 900-1000 CE. The pyramids were abandoned by the 1500s.

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u/AutisticFloridaMan 9d ago

Brother, it’s not a biopic. Historical accuracy in Hollywood is like a politician trying to get into heaven. Theoretically possible, but it just ain’t gonna happen. The Mayans were still somewhat powerful in 1502, but definitely on a massive decline.

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u/BlackEastwood 9d ago

"Allegedly".🙃

Everything I find sets it in that year or approximate year. Anything beyond that is your battle to fight.

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u/PotatoOnMars 9d ago

The movie is just entirely historically inaccurate, as are most Mel Gibson movies.

5

u/BlackEastwood 9d ago

Probably, but many movies can be. Artistic license and whatnot. I find other things of it to enjoy, like its cast and language.

10

u/PotatoOnMars 9d ago

I do agree that the movie is well made in terms of production value. The historical stuff just bugs me.

2

u/BeautifulUpstairs 9d ago

The language that they all spoke at 25% native speed, like actors barely memorizing meaningless sounds?

3

u/BlackEastwood 9d ago

And that means I cant enjoy it?

1

u/booze_clues 9d ago

They probably chose to prioritize what would sound best for 99.9% of the world vs the native speakers who watched the movie.