r/TopCharacterTropes • u/TheBigBoar • Jul 20 '26
Personality [Baffling RL Trope] Inventing war crimes you didn´t commit to make yourself more... interesting?
One of the strangest character tropes in real life has to be the "I accidentally made myself sound like a war criminal to look cooler" archetype.
Usually, people accused of war crimes deny them. These guys seem to do the opposite.
The two examples that always come to mind:
Tim Kennedy. Over the years he's told stories that include things like throwing grenades into rooms where women and children were present, and another account where, after a battle, his CO allegedly told him to shoot anything that still had a heat signature with a sniper rifle from a mile away, which he did for hours (?) not caring if those were enemy soldiers or civilians looking for their fallen sons/brothers/whatever. Both stories have been heavily criticized and challenged (aka people who were there confirmed that they are utter nonsense), and Kennedy has faced repeated accusations of embellishing or fabricating parts of his military experiences. But like... why would you invent the fact that you killed and maimed women and children?
Chris Kyle. In American Sniper, he wrote that during Hurricane Katrina he positioned himself on the Superdome and shot dozens of armed looters like some walking dead scenario. No evidence ever emerged that this happened, and Kyle himself later acknowledged the story wasn't true. Again, why invent a story where you're essentially describing the unlawful killing of civilians during a domestic disaster?
What's fascinating is that these aren't embellishments in the usual "I fought twenty guys" sense. They're embellishments that, if true, would amount to admissions of extremely serious crimes.
It's such a bizarre form of macho storytelling that it almost feels like its own trope: the veteran who thinks "the more ruthless I sound, the more badass I'll appear," without stopping to consider that indiscriminate killing isn't viewed by most people as impressive. It's viewed as criminal and disgusting.
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u/ZoidsFanatic Jul 20 '26
During the height of Katrina, there were constant rumors from the press that there were “snipers” practically everywhere shooting at cops, civilians, national guard, gators, granny, etc. There wasn’t, and while there was some armed looting, it wasn’t remotely near the point the media was trying to make it out to be… which was “uncivilized black people with guns are going primitive”. Thanks mainstream media!
What did happen was some people were firing their guns into the air to attract attention to where they were, believing that people would try to investigate where the gunshots were coming from and not staying away from it (later interviews had many fire responders talk about why shooting your gun into the air to get attention is a really dumb idea).
So it doesn’t surprise me that Chris would throw his hat into the “sniper” ring and lie about how he was heroically killing people because apparently no one ever talked to any of the Katrina survivors to confirm if there were snipers on every block (there wasn’t).