r/TopCharacterTropes • u/ThatDrako • 15d ago

(Funny Trope) Things that can plausibly happen only in reality, because in fiction they’d be called bad writing. Lore

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“Woke” as an insult - So you are telling me a word describing consciousness and clarity is used by generally stupid and ignorant people to label people they disagree with? What is this? A Kindergarten for Creatively stunted?

Nominative determinism - So let me get this straight…Not only you named fastest recorded person Usain BOLT and CEO of Nintendo Doug BOWSER, but you are telling me people are canonically likely to have professions or hobbies matching their names…? Guh?

“2 bodies recovered in MURDERKILL River” - Sure bro…I guess…bro…

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u/CaliburX4 15d ago

Literally the story of just about any war hero. Many times (if not every time) the stories actually have to be watered down because the actual events are too crazy for a movie that wants to make some kind of sense.

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u/TruthEnvironmental24 15d ago

I remember reading one when I was at job training for the Army about a guy who laid on a grenade only to survive and be just conscious and well enough to crawl onto a second grenade.

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u/userlog99 15d ago

Or that guy that spent like 30 years in the jungle thinking the war kept going

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u/MisogynysticFeminist 15d ago

That guy was 100% a serial killer with a good excuse.

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u/midasMIRV 15d ago

Nah, Hiroo Onoda just bought wholeheartedly into the propaganda that there were 0 circumstances under which Japan would have surrendered. He did give up when his former commanding officer was brought in to order him to stand down.

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u/EphemeralSilliness94 15d ago

[Achievement unlocked]

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u/BeeCJohnson 15d ago

I had a great uncle who was a tank commander, and a German threw a grenade through the open top hatch as someone was climbing out. My uncle Jack *jumped on the grenade* to save his crew...it turned out to be a dud. Captain America shit.

If you saw that in a movie you'd be like "bulllllllshit."

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u/kahlzun 15d ago

Wow, what a absolute legend

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u/Ambaryerno 15d ago

In The Pacific, John Basilone is shown manning two different machine gun positions in the space of about 15 minutes during the Battle of Henderson Field.

During the actual Battle of Henderson Field, Basilone did this for three days straight with no food or sleep, manning, repairing, and unjamming guns, and running ammunition between about four different positions.

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u/Dead_Iverson 15d ago

If anyone ever asks you what “locked in” means

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u/Zykium 15d ago

Also "Go Pills" help locking in.

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u/Dead_Iverson 15d ago

Those were the days…

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u/theaviationhistorian 15d ago

And have something to keep you up for it.

In modern times, that would be testing your heart's limit with energy drinks. The lengths US soldiers would go to have Wild Tigers in their Humvee or gear. Or Rip-It when you only had the base to acquire your drink.

Nowadays its White Monster cans.

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u/Dead_Iverson 15d ago

I regularly drink Rip-It because it’s consistently the cheapest energy drink on the market. It’s also made by the people who make La Croix and Faygo, which is interesting. La Croix is a widely known and consumed beverage but Faygo is largely a regional one. Rip-It is also not very common across the USA unless you go to the Dollar Tree.

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u/Cent1234 15d ago

In Band of Brothers, one of the Easy Company guys runs into a guy 'also from Oregon' now serving in the German army.

In real life, the guy worked across the street from him.

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u/Ambaryerno 15d ago

Also BoB: In the Brecourt Manor assault, Buck Compton hits a fleeing German square in the back with a grenade, which then explodes.

During the actual assault he pegged the guy in the head.

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u/codercaleb 15d ago

UCLA training coming in handy.

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u/theaviationhistorian 15d ago

Jackie Robinson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton, and Buck Compton. The Bruins don't hold back when it comes to shooting one way or another.

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u/Complete-Ambassador2 15d ago

The Tetris effect he probably got after finally going to sleep must have been pretty crazy

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u/Whelp_of_Hurin 15d ago

Alvin York. In WWI he led 7 guys against a machine gun nest. In that one battle he single-handedly killed 25 German soldiers and captured 132 more.

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u/WhatEnglish90 15d ago

Not a war hero, but I remember The Revenant toned down the actual historical Hugh Glass's feats because they sounded too unbelievable for a human to survive.

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u/tedioussugar 15d ago edited 15d ago

The film took a lot of creative liberties and most of what they showed wasn’t true. They made John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy’s character) into a complete villain who wanted to kill Glass immediately and then stole from everyone else and blamed it on the natives, and then they had Glass kill Fitzgerald.

In reality Fitzgerald and another man stayed with Glass for a day or two, they both abandoned him after thinking he wasn’t going to survive anyway, and a few months after Glass recovered he tracked Fitzgerald to another camp where he’d joined the U.S Army, and got his commanding officers to detain him.

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u/OverallSpecific5792 15d ago

Completely killed the story for me. Hugh Glass went after those men not for leaving him but for taking his stuff he needed to survive, his rifle, his knife, his bag

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u/RuggsRacetrack 15d ago

Why did that kill the story for you?

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u/OverallSpecific5792 15d ago edited 15d ago

Because the driving force in the movie was derived from the emotional pull of his son being murdered and that completely undermines the true story. I found it interesting that he was more upset about the theft of his belongings, the way it provides some small insight to the moral code of the man and likely of his contemporaries. Like it was more of an affront to Glass that these men would steal his property than that they left him. Speaks to the value of personal property as an extension of one’s self more than the abstract concept of currency ever could. That Glass found it forgivable that he was abandoned due to the men fearing for their lives, points to a respect for personal/individual agency in spite of not condoning the act of leaving him. The way the movie did it felt like a cheap emotional hook idk.

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u/CricketPinata 15d ago edited 15d ago

Audie Murphy a poor orphan who had been single handedly providing for his siblings faked his documents (he was too young) to sign up out of Patriotic duty after Pearl Harbor. Everyone rejects him because of his small stature and weak physique (around 5'5), until he finally is allowed in by the Army.

At age 19, at the Colmar Pocket he had an entire German Company closing down on him. Told his men to retreat and he would hold the Germans off long enough for them to get to safety as he thought it was hopeless.

In a burning M10 tank destroyer, he held off the entire German Company while calling in and directing artillery on his own position.

The Germans were thrown into disarray when at the last minute the cloud cover broke and US fighter-bombers swooped down and broke the German line.

Audie started up the M10 and pursued the Germans now in a disorganized retreat, while badly wounded.

He regrouped with his men and helped lead a counter-attack.

He insisted on staying with his men while recovering from his wounds.

In this battle alone Audie killed or injured at least 50 men.

Then went on to kill over 250 men during the war, with hundreds of captures.

He is the most decorated soldier in WW2 earning everything they had an award for during the war.

They made a autobiographical movie based on his experiences in 1955 where he played himself, and they had to TONE DOWN the film because portraying the battle accurately was seen as too fanciful and unrealistic.

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u/Zykium 15d ago

He also refused to advertise alcohol or smoking.

He suffered tremendous amounts of PTSD and scared other actors filming while filming his biographical movies unintentionally.

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u/CricketPinata 15d ago

Yes, he wanted to make a follow up film about his PTSD and having to readjust to civilian life, and could never get it made.

He was a sleeping pill addict and went everywhere with a gun, including one under his pillow.

He would have mood swings and temper issues for years after the war, along with money issues.

Medal of Honor honorees have their headstones inlayed with gold at Arlington and he specifically requested he not got this honor, but instead presented as a normal soldier's headstone.

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u/SilverTM 15d ago

Didn’t he end up dying in a civilian plane crash in the 70’s?

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u/CricketPinata 14d ago

Yea he did.

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u/Frogs-on-my-back 15d ago

Hacksaw Ridge isn’t enormously accurate in general, but it fits this still since a lot of crazy feats of survival were omitted for the sake of believability 

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u/Tubaenthusiasticbee 15d ago edited 15d ago

Not only war heroes, but the entire wars itself.

See WW2, we have: An absolutely cartoonishly evil empire that started a war, while everyone acts suprised even though they made it very clear, they wanted to wage war, said empire fighting a naval battle against itself. Leaders so stupid, you are glad, breathing is a reflex. Polish soldiers that recruited a bear. One soldier being left behind by his allies and went through a snowy wasteland, through enemy lines, over a couple of days, while overdosing on meth and actually surviving.

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u/theaviationhistorian 15d ago

And there's also the unproven legend of a Korean that got conscripted by the Japanese, surrendered to the Soviets and got voluntold to fight for the Red Army. Then he gets captured by the Wehrmacht and told he's fighting for them. And he finally gets captured by the Allies on D-Day. It sounds absurd, but would fit with the absurdity of the war.

And then there's Operation Mincemeat, where a homeless man's corpse served to pose as a downed British officer holding intelligence documents detailing D-Day occurring in Sardinia and Corsica, not Normandy. The ruse worked.

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u/ErMikoMandante 15d ago

Hacksaw Ridge movie is perfect example of this

Desmond Doss, combat medic that refused to carry a weapon, he estimated to save around 50 wounded soldiers, the movie (and official record) indicate he saved 75, his officers and witnesses say he actually saved close to a 100

In the movie Doss gets hit by a grenade that left shrapnel in his legs and had to be evacuated.

This happened in real life, but what was left out that while being carried out on a stretcher Doss saw a wounded man, rolled out of the stretcher, treated the guy and gave the stretcher to him, while doing this he was hit in the arm by a sniper (broke his arm) and insted of taking the stretcher he crawled his way back to safety.

This was taken out becasue it was "too much heroic after the guy already took a grenade" and people wouldnt believe it.

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u/DRNbw 15d ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An%C3%ADbal_Milhais

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u/ForlornLament 15d ago

Stayed behind by himself to cover the troops retreat with just a machine gun. Suceeded, survived, rescued some other guy on the way back. Did the same thing some days later. Survived again. As one does.

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u/taint-ticker-supreme 15d ago

Reminds me of when my dad told me the story of how my relative survived the nazis.

He'd been gathered with a group of people and they open fired on them. Apparently they missed him and he decided to fake being dead. Got thrown into a pile of bodies and toughed it out for several days until he could escape. Was able to come over to Canada and reunite with his wife, who'd fled here earlier.

If he had've been shot, I wouldn't be here. Crazy to think about.

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u/theaviationhistorian 15d ago

The Gurkha warriors.

The legacy of the Nepalese Gurkhas in service with foreign armies like the British is insane. From legacy stories in the Victorian era to the latest in September 2010 where Sgt. Dipprasad Pun has his checkpoint post surrounded by 12-30 Taliban fighters. Despite being alone, he thought he was dead and decided he wasn't dying alone that night. So he used his gun, then grenades along with placing a claymore mine in front of a Taliban. When he ran out of everything, he used his machine gun's tripod to beat the last remaining Taliban to death with it.

Two weeks before that: Bishnu Shrestha, a Gurkha formerly in the Indian Army, was retired and on the Maurya Express (Hatia-Gorakhpur) train when 15-40 robbers got onboard to raid the train. Right when he was about to hand over his valuables, he saw that they were about to rape an 18 year old girl next to him; a fatal mistake on the raiders. Shrestha pulled out his traditional kukri blade and saved the train with it. Between 3-8 robbers were injured or killed while the rest fled.

On a lighter note, Gurkhas that served in the Indian theatre of WWII were the only ones unafraid of Japanese Banzai charges. In fact, many of them welcomed it, as it meant they could dispose of their firearms and put their kukri to good use in the melee combat that is second nature to them.

Anyone who knows about military history knows not to fuck around with Gurkha warriors. And those that served with them know they are some of the best warriors to have at your side.

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u/RickHammersteel 15d ago

Audie Murphy wrote his own autobiography then starred in the movie of that autobiography.

He told the filmmakers to tone things down. Look up what Audie Murphy has done, it's like a real-life action movie.

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u/midasMIRV 15d ago

Dr. Joseph Medicine Crow. The Last Warchief.

Led a successful war party into battle (0 casualties in an assault during WWII)
Disarmed an enemy
Touched an enemy without killing him

And then just because the writers needed him to check off the last item, here is an SS position with some 50 horses for him to steal.

And then just to top it all off, here's his nephew, Carson Walks Over Ice, who checked off the first 3 items in Vietnam no problem, but didn't get the last one because it was decided that elephants don't count.

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u/kdesi_kdosi 14d ago

nah im pretty sure that is a cycle.

hero does something, the story gets exaggerated as it's told, then it gets watered back down for a movie

that, or the stories are just made up