[Authoritarian Trope] Casually being questioned/threatened by an imposing authority figure out of nowhere

[u/TheWalkingBag]

One way to really set the oppressive atmosphere of a setting is by having our characters get randomly questioned or interrogated by a soldier/cop out of nowhere, often for very minor reasons

1. "Pick up that can." (Half-Life 2)

When Gordon first arrives to City 17, a Combine Civil Protection officer he's passing by suddenly drops a soda can in front of him and orders him to pick it up. If you comply here and throw the can in the bin he'll amusedly let you pass, but if you don't then he'll proceed to whip out his stunstick and attack you on the spot

1. "I'm just a tourist." (Andor)

In the episode "Announcement" of Season 1, a random shoretrooper on Niamos questions and threatens Cassian (using the fake alias "Keef Girgo") for nervously looking around too much while they're conducting a crackdown. The trooper asks if he's "a part of it" to which Cassian repeatedly protests that he isn't and that he's just a perfectly normal tourist; he's then violently arrested by him anyway and sentenced to hard labor in Narkina 5 without a fair trial

1. "Now, you. Show me your identification papers, please." (Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus)

A Nazi commandant randomly sits down at Papa Joe's Diner, orders a strawberry milkshake for himself and then very casually asks Blazkowicz to show his ID papers to him. Here you can show him your fake IDs (where you use the alias "John Smith") which seems to fool the commandant for a bit before he looks at a wanted poster on the wall and immediately recognizes your true identity, frantically pulling out his pistol before being shot by the diner's owner

[u/Ordo_Liberal]

That Resort World into prison arc was so important for the Start Wars lore universe as a whole.

It shows how you can never be free living under an authoritarian government. Without simple concepts as right to legal representation, defense and habeas corpus... the state can and will arrest random people for random reasons at will.

[u/twec21 → u/Ordo_Liberal]

It also REALLY scales the imperial construction effort.

[u/undergirltemmie → u/Ordo_Liberal]

Tho also somewhat weakened by the fact that cassian WAS effectively a terrorist who probably looked guilty because he had reason to be afraid.

Somewhat weakens the message. That shoretrooper was kinda spot on in his assessment.

Of course, he's.. also kind of entirely wrong? The set-up is a bit quirky like that.

They imprisoned a lot of innocents (by their legal standards) but Andor was actually wanted.

[u/Barbaric_Stupid → u/undergirltemmie]

You don't get it. It is meant to show lack of justice in tyrannical systems, and also how dumb fascist regimes sometimes can be. They've got the right guy, all that ISB effort was for nothing, and yet they couldn't capitalize on it.

[u/undergirltemmie → u/Barbaric_Stupid]

I can get it and still muse about silly thoughts.

The thing is, in the end they didn't fail BECAUSE they imprisoned him. They failed because Andor's so dangerous he essentially solo overthrew a max security prison.

Like, if he didn't regardless of who caught em, he dies down there. Their goal is achieved. That actually speaks to a grim efficiency in any situation where the guards are not comically inept and basic two-step security is in place.

That's the irony to me. If he wasn't the hero here, the empire woulda just won by pure accident. Because it's not like the ISB would catch him regardless.

Kinda undermines it a bit and retroactively justifies their actions in a fucked up kind of way that is entirely immoral.

Because their oppressive net of law WORKED ENTIRELY here. Cassion just rambo'd right through it anyhow.

[u/DasharrEandall → u/undergirltemmie]

The thing is, in the end they didn't fail BECAUSE they imprisoned him. They failed because Andor's so dangerous he essentially solo overthrew a max security prison.

No, they did fail because they imprisoned him, because Cassian was done with rebelling after his payday from the Aldhani heist, and would've been no threat to them if only the Empire had just left him alone.

That's the sense that Cassian's "Rambo" - not the one-man army of the second movie; he would've never been able to escape if the Empire hadn't provoked a prison uprising with their greed for slave labour, leaving all the prisoners with only "one way out". He's like Rambo from First Blood, just trying to mind his own business until the power-tripping sherriff repeatedly forced conflict and escalation.

[u/ReplicatorsAteMerlin → u/DasharrEandall]

Oh, turns out you already explained that part that I just left a message about. Yeah, a couple people in this thread seem to have forgotten the "one way out" thing.

[u/ReplicatorsAteMerlin → u/undergirltemmie]

Cassian wasn't anywhere near close to staging a prisoner revolt without the oppression of the system shooting itself in the foot. Andy Serkis' character was very much a "stop that nonsense, I'm doing my time and getting out properly" sort and many others were the same. He had nothing.

And then, because The Empire just have to be dicks about everything, the prison screwed up and with that came the revelation that nobody is ever getting out.

That was what caused the prison riot. Without that, Cassian fails to get traction and nothing happens. It brought the prisoners who just wanted to keep their heads down and avoid trouble into the fold and that was absolutely essential.

[u/Ordo_Liberal → u/undergirltemmie]

I think it improves the message, actually.

Big net arrests work. I'm sure that the Nazis caught a lot of bad people... alongside the millions of innocents...

It goes back to the problem. How many innocents are you willing to sacrifice to get one bad guy?

[u/peppermint-ginger → u/Ordo_Liberal]

Plus, they never even knew he was a wanted man. Andor’s arrest helped keep him hidden from the ISB in later episodes. Not only are mass arrests inefficient, but counter-productive.

[u/RegorHK → u/Ordo_Liberal]

Lol, no the Nazis did not "caught a lot of bad people" not in relation. They however "cought" a lot of democrats, homosexuals, Sinti and Roma and people they generaly did not agree with. They also oppressed some criminals in a way that they simply did not allowed them to be free after their sentences, which is also not catching bad people in my book.

[u/SmokeyUnicycle → u/RegorHK]

they caught and killed millions of people of course they got some real assholes in that

[u/Ordo_Liberal → u/SmokeyUnicycle]

Yeah I don't know why that isn't obvious.

My entire point is that then if it kills bad people, its obviously not worth it

[u/Petragor07 → u/undergirltemmie]

That's part of the irony. The reason ISB can't find and interrogate the rebel Cassian Andor, is because their own "Justice" system jailed for something he didn't do

[u/undergirltemmie → u/Petragor07]

But the question that makes it so ethereal is: Would he have been jailed if he wasn't.

The actions of the empire are generally indefensible. Frankly the empire is cartoonishly evil (but so are many current leaders in reality, so who knows, maybe spot on)

Because there's an argument to be made that he probably wouldn't have been jailed if he WASN'T on the run since he was very visibly sketchy and nervous. So... if the rebel Cassion Andor didn't exist, the civillian Cassion Andor would (!)probably(!) have walked by just fine.

I realize it's goofy. But also an ironic thought. Not so goofy for anyone who is just nervous because there's an oppressive regime. (I am also aware that many would be reasonably nervous when there's a rebel attack/police operation, I know the empire is a villain. It was just musing)

[u/ReplicatorsAteMerlin → u/undergirltemmie]

I think that "being nervous" around Imperia Forces is only a remotely suspicious thing if there are no reasons for innocent people to be nervous around them.

Given the fact that just looking out of place or vaguely uncomfortable during a police action can get you sent to life in prison, one would expect that quite a lot of completely innocent civilians are a bit on edge around the Imperials.

[u/Ashley_1066 → u/undergirltemmie]

Well... a lot more than rebels will be afraid of the empire, if the line for 'enslaving someone to death' is looking afraid of the cops, you're not going to be mostly hitting terrorists. Especially cause that sounds terrifying to literally anyone.

Andor had to be pulled back in for the story to continue, and I like the fact that it wasnt an elite imperial crack team that traced him down, it was a random spot check without due process that starts the rube goldberg machine to blow up the death star and end the empire as a whole. If that shoretrooper had just been chill, Cassian disappears in obscurity and the rogue one raid fails, leading to god knows what

[u/static_func → u/undergirltemmie]

We saw him though, he didn't look guilty. He was just an innocent bystander in that situation. Even once he was imprisoned they had no idea who he was

[u/Greatest-Comrade → u/static_func]

Also he just saw a bunch of people yelling and a robot manhandling people, of course he looks nervous!

If anything we saw him remain too calm for his disguise (random tourist isn’t shitting themselves when some ruffians cause a commotion?) which makes it even more ridiculous that the shore trooper arrested him for that.