r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Remarkable_Public138 • 6h ago
Personality [Heartwarming Trope] A good member of an evil organization.
1) Wilm Hosenfeld: Real Life, depicted in The Pianist
After the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, Władysław Szpilman is trapped in the ruins, forced to hide out and scavenge for food. He is found by Hosenfeld, who takes pity on him and gives him food and clothing. He was later made Righteous among the Nations.
2) General Kuribayashi: Real Life, depicted in Letters from Iwo Jima
In contrast to the abuse and suicidality prevalent in the Imperial Japanese army, Kuribayashi treats his soldiers with respect. He clamps down on corporate punishments and executions, and allows tactical retreat to preserve the lives of his men.
3) Lieutenant Dunbar: Dances with the Wolves
In contrast to the bigotry and disdain expressed against the Sioux by other cavalry officers, Dunbar tries to seek peace with his neighbors and advocates preserving their culture. And so when another Cavalry unit arrives at his post, Dunbar refuses to help them chase the Sioux and eventually turns on his country.
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u/polygramfan 5h ago
Now I’m certainly not in the business of praising nazis, but here’s another good nazi
John Rabe was sent to china as a diplomat for the nazi party, and was residing in Nanking, then the capital of nationalist China. In anticipation of the imperial japanese coming to sack the city, he established a demilitarized zone within its walls for citizens to take refuge. All in all he reportedly sheltered 250,000+ people in the midst of one of the greatest military atrocities in living memory
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u/TimeRisk2059 5h ago
I forget his name, but there was a "reverse" japanese diplomat in Europe, who helped jewish people escape the Holocaust. Rather ironic, but also speaks about how humanity sometimes shines through.
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u/Stalker_Pietrow 4h ago
I think you meant Chiune Sugihara, he issued multiple (if not thousands) fake visas to Jews to allow them to escape the Holocaust.
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u/Blacksmithkin 5h ago
I remember listening to a podcast about the atrocities in Nanking, and another thing that stuck out to me is that a large part of why the Japanese government was unsuccessful in arguing that it was just rogue elements of the army acting on their own was because that guy had contacted government officials (both Japanese and nazi) so often and in such detail that he basically singlehandedly created a paper trail that they knew about what was happening.
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u/BattlemasterMayce 4h ago
I think a critical point of understanding in the story of John Rabe is that he has imprisoned in disgrace by the Nazi Party once he returned to Germany, because the nazis were outraged that he would offend their most important ally on the global stage to save civilians of an enemy nation. So I think labeling him "a good nazi" is a bit misleading. A good turncoat, sure, not a good nazi.
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u/FourFunnelFanatic 1h ago
The thing is though, Japan wasn’t a major German ally in 1937. Indeed China was actually a bigger ally of Germany, to the point that they were largely using German equipment and even had a German Field Marshall commanding part of the defense of Shanghai. Rabe only got in trouble after Germany and Japan became closer, and it was just briefly to get him to stop talking about Nanking
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u/LowDragonfruit1213 3h ago edited 3h ago
A small correction: he had already been living in China for many years by the time the Nazi Party came to power in Germany. Later, he would become the Party’s representative in the city, leveraging the influence he held as a German and a Party member to establish the Safety Zone after the capital was captured by the Imperial Japanese Army. The fact that he had lived for such a long time among the Chinese people was a decisive factor in his decision to stay and protect the city's population.
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u/Parsifal_verwandlung 1h ago
Japanese diplomat helping Jews escape from Germans 🤝 German diplomat helping Chinese escape from Japanese
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u/SatoruGojo232 6h ago
Finn (FN-2187) (Star Wars: The Force Awakens): Formerly a member of the First Order (a tyrannical military junta born from the ashes of the Galactic Empire).
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u/Terminal_Insomnia_ 6h ago
He could've been such an interesting character.
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u/Far-Pangolin-4089 6h ago
So sad they killed him right in the beginning only to keep him on life support for the movies
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u/Caesar_Seriona 1h ago
They fucking "accidently" created a black Kyle Kartarn and did fuck all with it.
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u/Appropriate_Box1380 6h ago
- Spends his young life indoctrinated and is raised to be emotionless
- Sees one combat death
- "War is bad ynow"; joins the Resistance
- Goes on to kill his former comrades without batting an eye
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u/Logically_Insane 6h ago
Both sides ass comment. One was senseless slaughter, the other was defense of innocents, it makes perfect sense why Finn would feel comfortable changing teams.
That is the only defense I will make of the sequel writing. They fumbled his whole character cause they didn’t know what to do with him.
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u/Appropriate_Box1380 5h ago
One was senseless slaughter, the other was defense of innocents
And how does he come to this conclusion after being brainwashed since basically birth? Do you honestly find it realistic that after years of indoctrination he goes out on the field where his first experience is a rebel shooting his comrade dead and so he thinks "ohh they are the good guys"? If that's what it would take to have a change of hearts, the First Order would basically have no army.
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u/Unabated_Blade 5h ago
Like, imagine if tomorrow some dude tells you that you actually don't need to breathe. Imagine how much effort it would take to believe them, and how much effort it would take to push through the sense of asphyxiation to get to "I don't actually need to breathe" nirvana.
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u/Glittering-Age-2013 4h ago
You say this like brainwashing is an absolute practice that works every time without flaw. Like someone undergoing indoctrination would NEVER be accidentally exposed to a conflicting piece of art or life-experience from outside of their education, or have some event occur with a comrade at the academy that teaches them basic human empathy, and that a seed like that could never blossom.
This is also such a pessimistic look at humanity. The idea that empathy and opposition to monstrosities is something that could never occur naturally in one’s mind, even in 1 in 1,000 cases.I have a lot of issues with the sequels, and with Finn’s character, but this is not one of them.
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u/Brilliant_watcher 3h ago
Both backstories of him mention how he was treated badly inside the army and how his only friend died in that raid
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u/RecklessDimwit 6h ago
He looks interesting, they should make a movie with him as the main character
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u/IronVader501 6h ago
Hosenfelds entire story isnt really heartwarming at all, more just sad.
Szpilman wasn't the only person he saved. Despite being an enthusiastic member of the NSDAP (joined willingly in 1933 and was a attendee at the massive Rally in Nuremberg in 1936), the warcrimes he witnessed during the invasion of Poland shocked him out of it.
In 1940 he was promoted to oversee a POW-Camp for polish Prisoners, were he protested the rough treatment of the inmates by the assigned guards several times and allowed them family-visits despite being forbidden from doing so.
Later he was sent to Warsaw were he was supposed to help organise sport-events for the occupation-troops. He used that position to employ and hide both fleeing jews (including one Leon Warm-Warczyński who had escaped from a train to the Treblinka Extermination Camp) and people hiding from the Gestapo and began to write to his wife about hopes for a Coup like in Italy to depose the NSDAP from power.
When the Warsaw uprising began, he was send to interrogate prisoners for information on the polish resistance, which he saw as "Missguided" but expressed admiration for their "national spirit" and wrote he tried to save their lives as much as he could.
Shortly after meeting Szpilman for the last time, Hosenfeld was transferred to the 9th Army and retreated out of Warsaw, but was taken prisoner by the soviets.
Thats were the real issues started:
Hosenfeld was technically not a normal officer. Despite working little in the field beyond the interrogations during the uprising, he was technically an intelligence-offcer. Even worse, the unit he was attached to was one that had participated in putting down the Warsaw Uprising. As a result, despite little to no personal involvement in those warcrimes, Hosenfeld was automatically sentenced to 25 years of hard labour and sent to built the Volgar-Don-Canal.
Despite East-Germany (after being begged to by his wife), Warm-Warczyński and later even the government of communist poland (on behalf of Szpilman, who had been notified of Hosenfelds fate by Warm-Warczyński) all repedeatly beseeching soviet authorities to let Hosenfeld go, they were refused. In 1952 his health began declining so rapidly he had to dictate the last postcards to his wife to another inmate, and he died in a labour camp from an aortic rupture in 1952.
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u/ApprehensivePrior507 6h ago
A. Ron Meyers from Fallout 2 was a technician from fascist faction Enclave. One day he realized that it was not the USA that he was fighting for, but rather the oligarchs who refused to give up their power. He decided to desert and one day he left Navarro and settled down in San Francisco
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u/Main_Jump4043 6h ago
Don't forget from the Imperial Japanese Civil Service
Chiune Sugihara. Often referred to as the "Oskar Schindler of Japan," he is celebrated for defying his own government's orders to save thousands of Jewish refugees from the Holocaust.
In 1939, Sugihara was appointed as the Vice Consul of the Japanese Empire in Kaunas, Lithuania. Following the Nazi invasion of Poland, thousands of Jewish refugees fled to Lithuania. By the summer of 1940, they surrounded the Japanese consulate, desperately seeking transit visas to escape through the Soviet Union to Japan, and eventually to safe third countries.
Sugihara wired the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tokyo three times, requesting permission to issue the visas. Each time, Tokyo strictly denied his requests, citing that the refugees did not possess the required funds or proper documentation. Faced with a choice between absolute diplomatic obedience and human life, Sugihara chose his conscience. Along with his wife, Yukiko, he made the perilous decision to disobey his government.
From late July to early September 1940, Sugihara spent 18 to 20 hours a day hand-writing visas. Even as his hands cramped and grew exhausted, he continued at an unbelievable pace. When the consulate was finally shut down and he was forced to board a train out of the country, Sugihara continued writing visas from his train window, tossing them into the crowd of desperate refugees on the platform. As the train pulled away, he even threw his official consular stamp into the crowd so that refugees could forge the documents to save themselves.
Legacy and Impact?
• 6,000 Lives Saved: His actions directly saved an estimated 6,000 Jewish refugees. Today, the descendants of those he saved number in the tens of thousands.
• Career Sacrifice: After the war, Sugihara was forced to resign from the foreign ministry for his insubordination. He lived much of his remaining life in obscurity, working odd jobs to support his family.
• Righteous Among the Nations: In 1985, a year before his death, Israel honored him with the title "Righteous Among the Nations." He remains the only Japanese citizen to receive this prestigious honor.
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u/Ranger202012 6h ago
Shida- Welcome To demon school! Iruma Kun
Works for an anarchist group and criminal organization yet genuinely cares and looks after the MC Iruma even if it's against her mission.
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u/carlsagerson 6h ago
Oskar Schindler (IRL/Schindler's List)
The only member of the Nazi Party to be considered Rightious Among Nations and buried in Israel. He was responcible for saving 1,100 Jews from the Holocaust which are now known as the Schindlerjuden.
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u/certainlynotdio 5h ago
There is also John Rabe, member of Nazi party as well, helped save a lot of people from Nanjing massacre.
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u/lifebeginsat9pm 6h ago
G1 Michigan from Armored Core 6. The in-game face of Balam, a ruthless and militaristic corporation oppressing the people of Rubicon.
Michigan himself keeps up a “drill sergeant” act but gives tough love to his underlings, and still cares about his former comrades at Furlong. It’s also hinted that he and Handler Walter were friends.
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u/GundamGuy2255 6h ago
Lets not forget that he's the only character that acknowledges the player's feats.
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u/BunNGunLee 5h ago
Heck, he actually seems to know most of his soldiers by name. Enough to remember their feats and order them to punch out rather than to suicidally continue fighting the infamous Raven. If he wins the fight, he immediately prioritizes medical evacuation for his wounded men and their damaged MT’s.
Even goes out in a pretty funny way. “Tell them big bad Michigan had a fall.” Keeps the spirits high, even if he’s dead or dying.
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u/Throwaway2137731 5h ago edited 5h ago
Major Soran Keize from the Star Wars Alphabet Squadron novels is a deconstructon of these types of characters. Keize is a kind hearted and honorable TIE squadron leader who doesn't care about the Empire but is very protective towards the pilots serving under him. Which leads him to commit war crimes for the Imperial Remnant to protect his squad from any accountability
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u/Silent_Biscotti_9832 6h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/sv1aJc0wAQKVvycv6v
Luis Serra was a former scientist under umbrella
Throughout RE4 he’s been trying to redeem himself for his actions. A pursuit that’d eventually would get him killed by Jack Krauser
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u/NinjaOfOnion 6h ago
Korsica from Hi Fi Rush, she essentially didn’t know what they are really doing and switched sides when she found
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u/certainlynotdio 5h ago
John Rabe irl Nazi.
He helped establish Nanjing Saftey Zone, which saved over 100,000 people. The fact that he was a Nazi likely played a role, considering Axis was a thing. He also documented the whole event and after returning to Nazi Germany he tried to rise awarness about this massacre, which lended him in hands of Gestapo.
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u/_RyanCooper_ 6h ago
Everyone who got killed on Isstvan III
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u/w021wjs 5h ago
“Flashes of explosions bloomed in the city’s north. Shooting stars punched through the dark clouds overhead, scorching holes through which the glimmering stars could be seen. The stars shone down on the Choral City in time to watch the city die.
‘Did we hurt them, captain? asked Solathen. ‘Did this mean anything?’
Tarvitz thought for a moment before replying.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we hurt them here. They’ll remember this.”
One of my favorite passages of fiction of all time. Truly captures the melancholy of their final moments.
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u/Sofaris 6h ago
Colonel Pretzel of the Berman Imperial Army from "Fuga Melodies of Steel":
He seems like a good person who is just with the wrong crowd. He follows orders but he questions them and finds them shameful. He repriments his soldiers for treating civilians to roughly. He is disgusted with the actions of his more evil colleagues who cause unnecesary casualties among civilians who can not fight back and Pretzel tries to keep his colleagues in check while thinking about rebuildung the country after the war. Pretzel does not hold back when fighting the children of the Taranis but he repeatetly tried to convince them to surrender. Its pretty clear he would rather avoid killing these children if he can. Now he is not innocent. Ultimatly he still follows orders. Still it feelt like he could have rather easily become a good guy had the children of the Taranis not killed him.
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u/Leaping_Wizards 5h ago
Edit: after writing this I scrolled down and saw someone else mentioned him. Feel free to ignore.
Since u/polygramfan mentioned John Rabe, I will take inspiration and mention Sugihara Chiune, who was a diplomat for the Empire of Japan in Lithuania at the start of WW2, he began receiving requests for travel visas from people, mainly Jews, looking to flee, the Japanese home office instructed him that unless the individuals requesting visas fit all requirement for their issuance, which most of these people did not, he was not to issue them. He disobeyed this order and worked 18-20 hour days writing as many visas as possible, producing about a month's-worth of visas per day from when he started in mid July 1940 to when the office was closed and he left in early September that year. He also arranged with Soviet authorities to allow travel for visa holders through the USSR to East Asia. The estimate is that he produced a bit over 2000 exit visas.
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u/FourFunnelFanatic 1h ago
Rabe and Chiune are both pretty good case studies in the differences between German and Japanese racial theory, which is basically that the Germans actually quite liked the Chinese (but didn’t see them as equals of course) and that the Japanese actually quite liked the Jews (but didn’t see them as equals of course). The even more bizarre thing is that the Japanese also circulated the same false beliefs about Jews that the Germans did… except they saw those things as beneficial and even had plans to set up a Jewish state in Manchuria.
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u/NPCtipicochileno 6h ago
Thundercracker (Skybound): Thundercracker changes factions, showing true character development
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u/Clirstan 5h ago
Spoilers for Ace Combat 8
D.D., the only good member of Enso Order who got fired from the company at some point
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u/FourFunnelFanatic 57m ago
Ace Combat has several good examples of this. Yellows 13 and 4 in AC04; Wolfgang “Pops” Buchner in Zero and AC5; the crews of the Pitomnik, Gumrak, Chuda, and Dub in AC5 (though my understanding is that Yuktobania isn’t really evil in that game); Voychek, Mijasik, and Tolstaya in AC6; and Rosa Cossette D’Elise, Édouard Labarthe, Sols 2 and 3, and Georg in AC7 just to name a few. Honestly, the only antagonist nation that seems to have been genuinely utter morally bankrupt is Sotoa, unless you consider Cope but he doesn’t really count imo.
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u/bgbarnard 3h ago
Oskar Schindler irl. Ardent member of the NSDAP to the point he had the golden party badge but saved 1,100 people from the holocaust. The bleak thing is that this was the only venture of his that succeeded. He died nearly destitute surviving off the charity of Jewish organizations.
https://giphy.com/gifs/xABNtEYLzwduU
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u/Opening-Biscotti-127 3h ago
(NIKKE) Privaty is one of the Central Government’s most loyal enforcers who previously obeyed orders without question, but over time it became more and more apparent that the government had no regard for the general populace and she began to defy orders in favor of trusting her own judgment
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u/FourFunnelFanatic 45m ago
One interesting thing about Kuribayashi is that he spent a ton of time in the US before the war; he attended Harvard and at various times lived in Buffalo, NY; Washington, DC; Boston, MA; Fort Bliss, TX; and Fort Riley, KS. He was outspokenly against the war in China from the very beginning and later the war against the US, and he was essentially sent to Iwo Jima as punishment for being “defeatist”.
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u/FourFunnelFanatic 29m ago
My submission for this one is General Rodion Malinovsky of the Red Army. In addition to being one of the most competent Soviet commanders of WW2, he was also one of the only ones to seriously crack down on atrocities committed by soldiers under his command, with any Soviet soldiers who were caught raping or murdering civilians more often than not being executed on the spot, allegedly by Malinovsky personally on some occasions (I will give a shoutout for Rokossovsky for also issuing similar orders, but they weren’t as widely carried out and he doesn’t get the Chad Award for other things he did especially regarding Poland). This may seem like the bare minimum, but it’s important to remember that the prevailing attitude among Red Army commanders at the time, including Stalin, was that the soldiers had a right to loot, rape, and murder as they pleased.
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u/WelshyB292 6h ago
Hey...no. You can be a good person and leave an evil organisation but if you're still in it you're just a coward who feels bad
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u/killingjoke96 6h ago
"History was full of the bones of good men who'd followed bad orders in the hope that they could soften the blow. Oh, yes, there were worse things they could do, but most of them began right where they started following bad orders." - Terry Pratchett.
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u/goteachyourself 6h ago
For the first two at least, open rebellion or desertion was instant death. Quiet subversion was far more survivable.
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u/certainlynotdio 5h ago
People who think like you are the very reason such organizations come to be.
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u/Blacksmithkin 5h ago
It's funny cause the comment right above yours for me is about a Japanese diplomat who used his position to directly save over 6000 lives during WW2.
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u/WelshyB292 3h ago
It's filunny, because Chiune Sugihara was crucially, not a nazi. Japan obviously not a great government during ww2 but they were not an active participant in the Jewish holocaust. He risked his life and was outside of the organisation perpetuating the crimes.
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u/FourFunnelFanatic 54m ago
No, they were just committing their own genocides against every group in China and Southeast Asia that wasn’t Japanese, which makes it so much better because they weren’t Jewish and the Japanese weren’t as efficient or something
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u/malumfectum 4h ago
You know what Kuribayashi would have done if he truly cared about the lives of his soldiers?
Surrender the moment US Navy vessels appeared on the horizon.
His actions weren’t any less suicidal than the broader conduct of the Imperial Japanese armed forces, just more tactically sound in taking more Americans with them.
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u/SpeedofDeath118 3h ago
The difference between him and the other Japanese officers is that he didn't waste his soldiers' lives as they did. But even so, a good soldier will still fight a losing battle, because that is part of his job.
The current US Code of Conduct for the military says that a soldier must never surrender of their own free will, and commanders must never order a surrender while their soldiers still have the means to resist.
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u/malumfectum 2h ago
Pull the other one. Are we seriously defending the conduct of the Imperial Japanese military? There were what, 200 or so Japanese survivors of Iwo Jima? The point of them being there was they were left to die in a war that Kuribayashi himself was under no illusions as their chances of victory. It’s not like an Allied unit under the same circumstances wouldn’t have surrendered when it was clear further resistance was pointless.
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u/FourFunnelFanatic 51m ago
Yeah, because the Allied commanders came from cultures where surrendering could still be considered honorable under certain circumstances and not literally the most shameful thing anyone could ever do. And even then, you still have cases of Allied commanders taking suicidal actions and being celebrated for it
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u/GhostBoyJames 6h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/STJ7W3pc7F6iA
Iroh from Avatar The Last Airbender specifically during Book One Water